Zhou Enlai

March 5, 1898 – January 8, 1976

Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) was a Chinese statesman, diplomat, and revolutionary who served as the first Premier of the People's Republic of China from October 1949 until his death in January 1976. He also served as the PRC's foreign minister from 1949 to 1958, attending the 1954 Geneva Conference and the 1955 Bandung Conference, and he helped Mao Zedong consolidate party power while keeping state operations running amid tumultuous politics.

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Biography

Zhou Enlai was born in Huai'an, Jiangsu, in 1898. He studied at Nankai Middle School in Tianjin, graduating in 1917, spent time in Japan, and in the early 1920s became one of the senior Chinese Communists in Europe. Returning to China in 1924, he joined the political department of the Whampoa Military Academy during the first alliance between the Communists and the Kuomintang.

After the Nationalists turned on the Communists in 1927 he helped lead the Nanchang Uprising and ran the party's underground and intelligence work. He took part in the Long March and, after the Zunyi Conference of 1935, worked under Mao Zedong's leadership. He negotiated with the Nationalists during the Xi'an Incident and the wartime united front, and in 1946 he represented the Communists in George Marshall's unsuccessful mediation mission.

When the People's Republic was proclaimed in 1949, Zhou became its first premier, a post he held until his death, and he was also foreign minister until 1958. He led China's delegations at the 1954 Geneva Conference and the 1955 Bandung Conference and helped arrange Richard Nixon's 1972 visit, which ended with the Shanghai Communiqué. During the Cultural Revolution he kept the government and economy running and protected some officials from persecution while remaining deferential to Mao. He withdrew from public life for medical treatment in 1975 and died in January 1976; public mourning for him grew into the Tiananmen Incident later that year.