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Zhou Enlai: A Political Life

Year of Publication : 2006

Publisher : Chinese University Press

Review :

In his memoirs, Theodore White recalls when, as a young correspondent in wartime Chongqing, he was served a whole pig at a dinner hosted by Zhou Enlai. As an orthodox Jew, he was forbidden to eat pork and explained this to his hosts. Zhou, the story goes, didn’t miss a beat. He simply informed White that although it looked like a pig, the animal he was being served was, in fact, a duck. White partook of the meal, noting that Zhou “was that kind of a man — he could make one believe that a pig was a duck, because one wanted to believe him....."

Zhou’s ability to obfuscate the true identity of White’s dinner might be considered a metaphor for the challenge that Zhou’s biographers have faced in assessing this major figure in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. Gao Wenqian, who was a researcher in the Central Documents Office of the Communist Party before emigrating to the United States, presents the problem of identifying the real Zhou Enlai in the introduction to his book (published outside mainland China) Wannian Zhou Enlai (The Later Years of Zhou Enlai):

Ultimately, what kind of man was Zhou Enlai? In the end, what kind of role did he play in the Cultural Revolution? In other words, was he a saintly, perfect man, or a wicked, seemingly loyal, but fake Confucian gentleman (junzi)? In disastrous times was he a man of merit (gongchen) who held things together, or was he an accomplice who helped the tyrant engage in evil? Did he play a dual role, a grand master at walking the tightrope of politics, or was he a double-faced person with a split personality? (p. 10)

The official Chinese responses to these questions have been shaped by Deng Xiaoping’s 1980 assessment of Zhou in his interview with the Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci. Deng noted that during the Cultural Revolution, Zhou was “in an extremely difficult position”

… and he said and did many things that he would have wished not to. But the people forgave him because, had he not done and said those things, he himself would not have been able to survive and play the neutralizing role he did, which reduced losses. He succeeded in protecting quite a number of people.

In 1998, on the centenary of his birth, a flood of encomia for Zhou published in China presented “Premier Zhou” in one hagiography after another as a loyal, hard-working, honest, considerate, detail-oriented, and patriotic model of an exemplary Chinese official. It was clear that the post-Mao leadership was capitalizing on Zhou’s popular image as one who resisted the excesses (or even the launching) of the Cultural Revolution to diminish the damage that those tumultuous years had done to the legitimacy of the Communist Party. In death as in life, Zhou would be the one to repair the excesses of past policies and redeem the party.

Barbara Barnouin, a researcher at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, and Yu Changgen, who is identified as having worked with Zhou in the Chinese Foreign Ministry in the 1960s and 1970s, in Zhou Enlai: A Political Life draw on much mainland Chinese literature to craft this biography — although their research yields some very different results. The book covers Zhou’s entire life, with almost one third of it devoted to the Cultural Revolution decade. Given the authors’ past writings (they collaborated on two previous studies of those years) and the intrinsic importance of this period for understanding Zhou’s impact on the evolution of Chinese politics as well as the controversies surrounding his role in this decade, this disproportionate amount of discussion is appropriate.

It is also the strongest section of the book. The presentation of the years before 1966 is a fairly standard narrative of the history of the Communist movement interspersed with discussions of Zhou’s role in particular events. Although the authors draw on a range of works (including those from outside China), the discussion is based largely on studies of Zhou published within China. The result is that the earlier sections of the book often convey the tone of mainland discussions praising Zhou for his hard work, leadership, and concern for his subordinates. Although the Cultural Revolution chapters also rely heavily on the same mainland sources and often reflect a similar tone, they are far more critical and analytical than the first part of the book.

The discussion of the 1966–1976 period joins those of Li Zhisui (Mao’s physician), Gao Wenqian, Song Yongyi, as well as Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals in their recent book on the Cultural Revolution, in challenging Deng Xiaoping’s assessment of Zhou and the carefully cultivated and monitored image that has emerged in mainland publications. The “real Zhou,” Barnouin and Yu conclude, “was not a paragon. Above all, he was a survivor” (p. 316).

Still, in line with the more conventional view of Zhou Enlai, Barnouin and Yu depict much of his activity during the Cultural Revolution as reactive — that is, seeking to make use of — or to blunt — political currents set in motion by others, most often by Mao, but also by the Cultural Revolution radicals or their followers. Thus, the authors suggest that Zhou maintained a low profile during the early stages of the Cultural Revolution which saw the first round of high-level purges (Peng Zhen, Luo Ruiqing, Lu Dingyi, and Yang Shangkun) and the August 1966 Eleventh Central Committee Plenum.

Zhou is presented as playing a more activist — and constructive — role as the Cultural Revolution unfolded. He is credited by the authors with taking advantage of domestic and foreign events to bring about the “anti-516” movement which, in turn, became the basis for the suppression of “leftists” and greater political stability. Moreover, he similarly used the demise of Lin Biao to implement a series of policies intended to remedy

the excesses of the Cultural Revolution in education, foreign policy, and the economy. As the authors note, when Mao opened the door “toward
change, even if only a crack … Zhou used every opportunity to correct the prevailing trend” (p. 285).
Although stripped of the laudatory rhetoric, this picture of Zhou’s general political stance during the later years of the Cultural Revolution is generally consistent with that presented by Chinese discussions. Zhou is depicted as “maneuvering between his own convictions and the need to adjust to the radical policies promoted by Mao and his coterie” (p. 219); moderating the actions of the Red Guards (p. 229); and striving to control radicalism in the nation’s foreign policy.

However, the authors’ discussion of Zhou Enlai’s behaviour with regard to personnel issues represents a striking departure from conventional views. Barnouin and Yu explicitly refute the image of Zhou as a “great protector of those who had become victims of the Cultural Revolution” (p. 244) and note not just his failure to protect such high-profile figures as Liu Shaoqi and his wife Wang Guangmei and He Long, but his actual participation in their persecution as well.

Barnouin and Yu’s case against Zhou does not stop there. They not only doubt that he was the “great protector,” they suggest that he was, in fact, the Grand Inquisitor (my term). They charge that the Central Case Examination Group which he led pursued its victims “with methods comparable to those employed in Stalinist gulags in the Soviet Union”

(p. 246). Moreover, they maintain that two related campaigns in which Zhou played a leading role — the movement “to purify class ranks” and the campaign against the “516 elements” — resulted in the jailing of hundreds of thousands, the extensive use of torture, and the execution of thousands, with the latter movement serving as the vehicle by which Zhou took his revenge on those radicals who had seized power in the Foreign Ministry during the summer of 1967.

These blemishes on Zhou’s image during the Cultural Revolution have been noted and elaborated upon by other scholars. Moreover, other scholars (most recently MacFarquhar and Schoenhals in their expansive 2006 study of “Mao’s Last Revolution”) have gone further than the argument presented in this book. The other authors have presented material that suggests a much more pro-active — even leading — role for Zhou than that suggested by Barnouin and Yu in the initial stages of the Cultural Revolution. This includes his role in the campaign against Peng Zhen et al. and the aftermath of the Eleventh Plenum, in which Zhou is said to have overseen the Cultural Revolution Group Central Caucus and to have been deeply involved in the Red Guard violence that ensued.

In sum, this study, along with a number of others that have been recently published, makes an important contribution to understanding more fully Zhou Enlai’s activities during the Cultural Revolution. One should not be surprised that such a depiction is far more complex and contradicts the hagiographic image propagated in China. To be sure, however, absent the release of archival material in China, our picture of Zhou’s activities will remain incomplete. Yet recent studies, of which this book is an example, are making it increasingly clear that the correct responses to Gao Wenqian’s dichotomies cited at the beginning of this review are most likely ambiguous and that a full assessment of the vision and operational code of one of the most important political figures in twentieth-century China will remain a daunting challenge for future biographers.

Steven M. Goldstein
Smith College, USA