Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #582857 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-21
• Released on: 2008-07-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781586486457
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Review
"a valuable and revealing book on the brutish and incredibly cruel nature of the Maoist regime... For a sense of what life as a top Communist leader under Mao was like look no further." BBC History Magazine "(Gao Wenqian) offers valuable insights into the "brutal mafia-like battle that is Chinese politics". Daily Telegraph"

About the Author

Customer Reviews

The Last Perfect Revolutionary
I read this book for a graduate history class on Mao's China

Gao Wenqian has written what surely will be received by the burgeoning Chinese history community as the definitive biography of "the Beloved People's Premier," Zhou Enlai. It is rare to comment on a biographer's life when writing a book report; but in this case, it is necessary to illuminate the reasoning and methods used by this author in order to understand the significance of his biography of Zhou. The authority and importance that this book represents to China scholarship is due to the position that the author held for over fourteen years, as a research writer in the small and secretive Central Documents Research Office of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for Zhou Enlai Studies. Gao's unique access to the secret People's Republic of China's (PRC) government and Party documents relating to not only Zhou but to Mao Zedong and other leading Party officials, as well as important events such as the Cultural Revolution, gives his biography an unparalleled stamp of authority. Soon after the government crackdown on dissidents in the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, Gao decided to bolt the Party. Over a period of two years, he successfully planed and executed his goal of compiling note cards of information from the archives he worked with and sent them through the mail to trusted friends in the West. By this method of subterfuge, he was eventually able to leave the country and travel to Harvard University on a fellowship, where he fulfilled his dream of writing a truthful biography of China's long serving premier (311-315).

Born on March 5, 1898 in Huai'an, Jiangsu Province, Zhou was born into a cultured and well-educated family that suffered from the hard economic times sweeping across China. Since his uncle was dying of tuberculosis and had no heirs, at six months old, Zhou was given over to his uncle and aunt to rear as their son. This was not an unusual arrangement since he was raised in a household which included his natural birth parents as well as his grandmother. Essentially, Zhou was raised with two mothers who adored him. His adoptive mother was widowed while he was an infant. She devoted her life to his upbringing; teaching the very intelligent and precocious Zhou to read at three years old. It is also at an early age that Zhou developed one of the most important character traits that embodied his life; his uncanny ability to weather the turbulent political storms that dogged him throughout his life (21-25). Like a cat with nine lives, Zhou's knack to survive any and all difficulties that he was faced with served as the major theme of Gao's biography of Zhou.

Zhou honed his survival instincts at an early age, and Gao did an excellent job of illuminating Zhou's survival skills throughout all the stages of his life. Orphaned at ten, by the time he was twelve years old, Zhou was sent off to northeastern China to an excellent school by an uncle. Gao pointed to this time, when Zhou was being picked on as the "strange new boy" in school, as an experience that stayed with him the rest of his life. With his own gang of friends, Zhou would confront his bullies one by one. Thus, Gao said of Zhou. "He revealed himself to be an early master at creating a united front. This was a skill that served him well in later years and may explain his capacity to survive so many hostile confrontations" (27). In addition, Zhou was well schooled in the teachings of Confucius during his childhood. Gao pointed out that Confucianism was the philosophy that ruled and guided Zhou's life. "With a strict Confucian upbringing, he personified modesty...Zhou was the diplomat, supremely poised, smooth, charming" (64-65).

Another great influence on Zhou's life was his extensive travels throughout the world--as a young man. Gao explored Zhou's life abroad to highlight another theme in his book Zhou's political awakening as a university student. When Zhou graduated Nankai University in 1917, his family sent him to Tokyo for further study with the goal of becoming a teacher. However, Zhou's experiences in Japan would forever change his life. First, he became frustrated in his studies by his poor fluency in Japanese. More importantly, he chafed under the growing militarism gripping Japanese society and the effects it started to have on China as well. The two years he spent in Japan awoke his slumbering political feelings and set him on the political course that would influence the rest of his life. Zhou returned to Nankai University in 1919, in time to participate in the May Fourth Movement, which was a student uprising that fostered an increase in Chinese nationalism coupled with a growing dissatisfaction over the Treaty of Versailles. It is during this time that he actively became involved in "revolutionary" politics and studied Marxism, but did not become a Party member until 1922. It was also during this period when he met his future wife, Ding Yenchao. In 1920 he traveled to France as a university student in a work-study program. However, he became disillusioned by how the students were used as factory workers and were poorly paid or educated for their services (29-37).

Once again Zhou's political soul was stirred, and despite being accepted to the University of Edinburgh, he embarked on organizing the recruitment of Chinese students in France, Belgium, and Germany to join the Communist Party. He met and kept friendships with several of China's future CCP leaders. "Deng Xiaoping, (who emerged as China's leader in 1978) and, in Germany, Zhu De; a student who was later celebrated as the father of the Red Army. Zhou...even met and worked with ...Ho Chi Minh, who later served as Chairman of the Vietnam Communist Party" (45).

Zhou performed his duties well and was ordered back to China in 1924 by the Party, to help establish a new "united front" between the CCP and Sun Yat-sen's new Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist Party). It is because of his early pioneering work as an organizational leader in the CCP, and especially after he threw his full support behind Mao to lead the Party in 1935, that Zhou's skills made him the obvious choice to become the Premier of the PRC in 1949 (51-56, 83-88). However, his stormy and multifaceted relationship with Mao highlights the other major theme of Gao's biography, which completes the picture of Zhou.

Zhou's relationship with Mao was a very complicated and "tortured" affair filled with enough political intrigue, and twists and turns to make a Chinese puzzle appear easy! It is during their relationship of over fifty years, that Zhou relied on his Confucian philosophy to serve him in order to survive Mao's rule, which one could argue was to the detriment of millions of Chinese. However, when examining Zhou's life and how he conducted himself within the Party, one gets the sense that Gao wanted the reader to question whether Zhou's Confucian teachings could be viewed as a blessing or a curse. Confucianism certainly tempered Zhou's personality. It also provided him with the psychological and political acumen that he found necessary to survive the many political pitfalls he was faced with throughout his life. Zhou's reliance on his Confucian philosophy is unique, considering it essentially made him the last "Mandarin bureaucrat" in an high political office in the PRC. However, one sensed from Gao's biography that Zhou's reliance on his Confucian philosophy also caused him to become non-confrontational to either Mao or Mao's wife, Jiang Qing--leader of the infamous "Gang of Four" (93-106, 166). "Zhou had no desire to offend Mao by doing something that would offend his wife....Zhou Enlai had long realized that if he departed on his own from the inner circle of power it would be a form of political death" (165). Zhou always took the middle ground and never took a political stand against Mao, since he made his fateful public declaration of support for Mao in 1943. "Anyone who in the past had opposed or expressed doubts about Comrade Mao Zedong's leadership or opinions has been proven completely wrong" (87). Even after spending five days of public self-criticism to CCP members, Zhou never really bought Mao's trust. Mao harbored deep resentment of Zhou who he thought had slighted him years earlier. Mao could not run the country without Zhou and his keen sense of organization. Thus, Gao noted, "Throughout the decades to come, Mao was plagued by this paradoxical relationship. He had to draw Zhou close even as he raised the whip, and sometimes lashed the man he could not live without" (88). Gao perceptively argued that in reality, Zhou's political survival instinct really served only one person--himself. Zhou rarely stuck his neck out to help others when they fell under the wrath of Mao. In the few instances that he did try to help others who Mao was preparing to dispose of politically, such as Lin Biao who was designated as Mao's successor, Zhou's efforts usually came too little and too late to save them (161-164).

Soon after becoming Premier, Zhou wanted to focus on China's economy, which was ravaged by decades of war. However, Mao was more concerned with his own political reputation. The first major "folly" that Mao put the Chinese people through was the "Great Leap Forward" in 1958. Mao's economic plan to increase agricultural and industrial production coupled with droughts and natural disasters, turned out to be an economic and humanitarian disaster; killing tens of millions of people. The plan that Mao embarked on also had political reasons that probably far outweighed Mao's concerns for the economic future of China. Mao became alarmed at Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Joseph Stalin's rule of the Soviet Union, as well as the uprising that took place in Hungary in 1956. Fearing that "intellectuals and moderates" in the Party would be bolstered by events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Mao used the "Great Leap Forward" from 1958 to 1960, to steer China along its own "Communist path," with disastrous results (89-93).

At first Zhou had sided with the "moderates"; such as, Liu Shaoqi, Mao's first heir apparent. However, Zhou detected Mao's plan. Mao was going to purge the Party of Liu, his "Chinese Khrushchev. Thus, when Liu decided to try to rectify the disastrous results of the "Great Leap Forward" on his own, Zhou quickly shifted his political stand to appear more neutral. "Refusing to align himself with either of these political titans, Zhou employed his fabled Confucian strategy and tried to find a middle way" (93). From 1960 to 1966, Zhou tried to minimize the economic and humanitarian damage done to the country by Mao after the "Great Leap Forward"; however, he never offered any real political opposition to Mao. "Zhou never forgot his relationship with Mao, and did everything he possibly could to shield his status as the unassailable Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. He wanted to show Mao exactly where he stood on the leadership issue" (94). Zhou's acquiescence to Mao only made matters worse when Mao embarked on the disastrous Cultural Revolution that gripped the country from 1966 through 1976--only to end after Mao's death.

Once again, Gao's biography proved how Zhou's reliance on his Confucian philosophy coupled with his well-honed political survival instincts caused him to offer virtually no opposition to Mao on his conduct of the Cultural Revolution. Always the "smooth" politician, Zhou weathered his most severe political storm during the Cultural Revolution; sadly, at the great expense of the Chinese people (106-111). In addition, Zhou offered tepid support or protection to "old Friends" as well as able party leaders, such as Lin Biao and Deng Xiaoping, who he thought were persecuted by Mao unfairly. Gao's account about the political intrigue in 1970 that led up to the "Lin Biao Affair" is a case in point of how Zhou, in a halfhearted attempt, tried to "calm" the political waters, to no avail. "Ever devoted to following Mao, and eager to preserve his own legacy, Zhou had no desire to see the Lin-Mao relationship collapse" (206). However, Zhou the consummate survivor began to distance himself politically from Lin Biao and cozy up to Mao's new favorite, Zhang Chunqiao. Deng was attributed with the following pithy quote regarding Zhou's role in the Cultural Revolution, which astutely summed up Zhou's character. "Without the premier the Cultural Revolution would have been much worse. And without the premier the Cultural Revolution wouldn't have dragged on for such a long time" (162).

Although Zhou personally weathered the turbulent times of the Cultural Revolution, he did so at the expense of his personal health and political reputation. By the time Zhou became a world-renowned figure in 1972 after the historic visit of President Nixon to China, Zhou was diagnosed with bladder cancer, which would take his life in 1976. Gao paints a "tragic portrait" of Zhou in his book. For instance, despite all the political "cow-towing" that Zhou engaged in for over forty years to ingratiate himself to Mao, when Zhou's health and life was on the line Mao took active steps to insure Zhou did not receive proper medical attention, which might have cured Zhou's bladder cancer. Mao, true to form, wanted to be sure that Zhou did not outlive him and become the leader of China (234-240). In addition, Zhou was distrusted once again, not only by Mao, but also by several high-ranking Party officials who witnessed Zhou's lack of help to those in the Party who were unjustly persecuted. Thus years later, Zhou was faulted according to Gao, for being too submissive and too eager to please Mao. "Although his supporters were always quick to claim that Zhou had no other choice, his critics insisted that Zhou encouraged Mao in his madness by yielding to the Chairman time after time and that by following him, he too was responsible for the disaster that befell China" (161). Thus in Gao's final chapter of his biography, he offers what seems like an apropos closing line in Zhou's obituary. "Zhou intended to be a good person, but failed. In this sense, his life story conveys the tragedy of the Chinese Communist political system, from which he ultimately emerged, at the end of his life, as a victim" (311-312).

Recommended for all interested in Asian history and political science.

For those with background in the topic
This book has tons of inside information about Zhou En Lai and his times but it is written with the assumption that the reader already knows modern Chinese history well. Ergo I enjoyed it, but I have decided not to assign it to my class. Without knowing the "standard story" this behind the scenes look is hard to follow. But for one who does know the terrain, it is of great interest.

CCP Trench Warfare

It appears that once the revolutionaries took hold of China, they had no idea what to do with it. In the absense of any program for bettering the country, Mao chose a legacy of power and adulation over one of public works. The result was a wholey dysfuctional bureaucray where participants schemed not for corner offices, but for their lives. This book documents those internal battles.

Unless you have some background in this, not all the dynamics will be accessible. What is clear to the general reader is that at the core was the insatiable ego of the revolution's presumed hero.

The Author's Note tells about the brave people who helped to assemble this book, bringing notes from China index card by index card. The list of sources shows the impressive primary materials that were used. You also learn of the author's mother, herself a victim of the Cultural Revolution, who despite being harrassed, encouraged him to write this book.

The title is misleading. This is not a bio of Zhou, there are pages and pages where he is hardly mentioned. The subtitle is strange since the author says he is trying to show Zhou as not the perfect man he is thought in some quarters to be. While not the main subject, Zhou is an organizing personality for this story, since he is, perhaps, the only enabler of Mao who could have done him in.

The big mid-twentieth century revolutions, China, Russia and Cuba ended in similar ways. The revolutionaries who put their lives on the line to remove autocracies easily surrendered those same dictatorial reins to their victorious generals. The generals had psychopathic needs for power and could not tolerate anything but a cadre of enablers. Fresh from fighting horiffic revolutions they were inured to bloodshed and suffering and saw them as legitimate political tools. Perhaps these are the mindsets it takes to wage a revolution against a despot, but as history shows, they are disasterous in running a country.