"Through the ups and downs of the unpredictable Chinese Revolution, Zhou Enlai’s reputation has seemed to stand untarnished. The reasons for this are in part old-fashioned ones: in a world of violent change, not noted for its finesse, Zhou Enlai stood out as elegant, courteous, even courtly; and with his remarkable good looks and fluent intelligence, he seemed to personify the mannerisms of diplomats from a gentler age. At the same time, Zhou’s reputation benefited from the apparently profound contrasts with Mao Zedong, who loved to thrust himself forward into the limelight, and never shrank from taking credit for China’s perpetual upheavals. The title of Gao Wenqian’s book, Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary, is deliberately sardonic, and is designed to show that far from being perfect, Zhou was in fact fallible, often devious, and capable of great cruelty to his friends and fellow revolutionaries."
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Heads of governmentRevolutionariesLeft-wing nationalistsCommunist Party of China politiciansForeign ministers of China
Original Language: English
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Sources
Jonathan Spence, in "The Mystery of Zhou Enlai", in The New York Review of Books (28 May 2009)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zhou_Enlai
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Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai (5 March 1898 – 8 January, 1976), a prominent Chinese Communist leader, was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, from 1949 until his death.
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