Chou En-Lai (Zhou Enlai)

He was a Chinese political leader of the twentieth century. He was a founder of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and an ally of Mao Zedong. As China's Premier, he helped establish closer relations between his country and western nations in the 1970s.

Chou En-Lai was Premier of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from its beginnings in 1949 until his death in 1976. From 1931 to 1934, Mao Zedong helped established the Chinese Soviet Republic in China, and was elected as the chairman. The CCP was under his chairmanship, and the government was headed by Chou En-Lai as premier of the State Administrative Council, which presided over the State Council. He earned his position as Premier from spending his life as a revolutionary at Mao Zedong’s side. Chou was determined to see things change for common man.

As a young man, he joined in several student protests in Tianjin. These were bloody riots of students against the government. The police jailed him briefly for his part in these demonstrations. Ironically, fifteen years after his death, history would repeat itself when students would protest in Tianemman Square against the party he helped to establish. After he served his time in jail, he then went to Paris to study. It was in Paris, that he became involved in the CCP. In 1949, the party took over mainland China. He then became the party’s Premier.

Chou was a moderator between Shaoqui and Mao. He restored orderly progress after the Great Leap Forward (1958-60) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-69). The Great Leap Forward was an economic and social plan initiated and led by Mao and carried out by the CCP from 1958 to 1962. The aim was to use China’s labor force to quickly transform the mainland from an agricultural economy dominated by peasant farmers into an industrialized, communist society. Mao believed that this change could occur very quickly, in leaps and bounds. In the Cultural Revolution he used his influence to protect several officials endangered by the Red Guards.

Abroad, Chou wanted unity in the developing world at the Bandung Conference in 1955. There he prevented an outright border confrontation with the USSR by negotiation with Prime Minister Kosygin in 1969, and was the principle advocate of détente, a permanent relaxation in international affairs during the Cold War, with the USA during the early 1970s.

Later in life, he enjoyed status as an elder statesman worldwide. "The Encyclopedia of the Cold War" states that "Chou was recognized as the voice of the People's Republic." Richard Nixon once said that without him, [the revolution] would have burned out and only the ashes would remain.” His most important achievement was welcoming Nixon and Kissinger to China. People felt he held the Chinese nation together during Mao’s radical social experiments. People in the west and outside of China viewed him as the heart and soul of the Communist Party. He kept the Party from becoming too radical. Because he was suspicious of the Soviet Union during the Cold War he decided to open communications with the USA after a twenty-year freeze.