Zhou Enlai

Zhou Enlai (}}; 5 March 18988 January 1976) was a Chinese statesman, diplomat, and revolutionary who served as the inaugural premier of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1949 until his death in 1976, and concurrently as the inaugural Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1949 to 1958. Zhou was a key figure in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and ally of Mao Zedong during the Chinese Civil War, later helping consolidate its control, form its foreign policy, and develop the economy.

Born in Jiangsu, as a student Zhou was involved in the 1919 May Fourth Movement, and in the early 1920s studied in France, where he joined the newly-founded CCP. During the party's alliance with the Kuomintang (KMT), he worked in the political department of the Whampoa Military Academy. In 1927, Zhou led the worker uprising which was crushed by the KMT in the Shanghai massacre, after which he helped lead the Nanchang uprising. Zhou worked underground in Shanghai before being transferred to the Jiangxi Soviet, and after the soviet's defeat was a member of the party's top leadership during its Long March. Zhou came to support Mao Zedong, who became leader of the CCP in 1935. During the Xi'an Incident in 1936, Zhou successfully persuaded KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek to agree to form a Second United Front against the Japanese. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Zhou was the resident representative of the CCP in Chongqing, and during the renewed civil war from 1946 assisted Mao in commanding military campaigns.

After the establishment of the PRC in 1949, Zhou was appointed head of government and foreign minister. Advocating peaceful coexistence with the West after the Korean War, he participated in the 1954 Geneva Conference and 1955 Bandung Conference and helped orchestrate Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China. He helped devise policies regarding disputes with the United States, Taiwan, the Soviet Union (after 1960), India, Korea, and Vietnam. Zhou survived the purges of other top officials during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, and was one of the main driving forces behind affairs of state as Mao dedicated much of his later years to political struggle and ideological work. Zhou's attempts at mitigating the Red Guards' damage and his efforts to protect others from their wrath made him immensely popular in its later stages.

Mao's health began to decline in 1971, and Lin Biao fell into disgrace and later died in a plane crash. Amid these events, Zhou was designated as Mao's successor in 1973, but struggled internally against the Gang of Four. In 1975, he fell out of the public eye for medical treatment and died one year later. The outpouring of public grief which his death provoked in Beijing turned to anger at the Gang of Four, leading to the 1976 Tiananmen incident. Though Zhou was succeeded by Hua Guofeng as premier and designated successor, after Mao's death Zhou's ally Deng Xiaoping was able to secure his place as paramount leader by 1978. Provided by Wikipedia