Review by Choice Review
Chen (New York Univ.; emer., Cornell Univ.), a leading scholar of modern China, presents a model biography of 20th-century China through the eyes of Premier Zhou Enlai. This impressively detailed account of Zhou's life recounts the stirring of revolutionary embers following the Bolshevik Revolution, the dawning of the early civil war between the Nationalists and the burgeoning Chinese Communist Party, the Long March, the failure of US intervention under Marshall, and the creation of the People's Republic of China. The book also covers the Korean War, standoff in Taiwan, the Sino-Soviet split, the Great Leap Forward, and the bloody Cultural Revolution. In the 1920s Zhou competed with Mao to lead the nascent CCP and survived assassination attempts. Nonetheless, Mao counted on Zhou while negotiating with Stalin and at the Geneva Conference in 1954. Well educated, Zhou had been in Europe as a student, growing the Communist Party, and was thus well positioned to understand the Soviet and American Cold War threats. At the time of Zhou's death, Deng Xiaoping, whom Zhou protected during the Cultural Revolution, led China, evidence of how Zhou posthumously protected China through the Nixon-Kissinger rapprochement in 1972. This is a thoroughly entertaining, historically accurate portrayal of Zhou Enlai, consummate diplomat and intellectual giant of the CCP. Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals. --Andrew Mark Mayer, emeritus, College of Staten Island/CUNY
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Long-serving Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (1898--1976) played the conscience to Mao Zedong's capricious lord of misrule, according to this sober biography. Historian Chen (Mao's China and the Cold War) recaps Zhou's career, from his role as the Chinese Communist Party's chief spymaster and diplomat during its civil war with Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist government to his activities as premier and foreign minister following the 1949 Communist victory, when he orchestrated such geopolitical breakthroughs as President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to Beijing. The book's fascinating core is Zhou's relationship with Party Chairman Mao, who began as Zhou's subordinate before accruing total power--a development Zhou, unlike many purged Party officials, survived through canny maneuvering. Chen styles Zhou as a brilliant organizer and a humane statesman whose "personalized administrative capacity... trapped Mao's seemingly unlimited power" and moderated his excesses. For instance, Zhou issued prescient warnings about Mao's Great Leap Forward policy, which led to economic collapse and famine, and helped stabilize the country after Mao's government purges during the Cultural Revolution. In the lucid, well-researched narrative, Zhou often comes off as a servile figure--he coldly joined in denouncing comrades persecuted by Mao, including his own daughter--which somewhat clouds Chen's vision of the premier as a master architect working behind the scenes to lay the groundwork for modern China's prosperity. Still, it's a satisfyingly fine-grained account of an influential figure often lost in Mao's shadow. Photos. (May)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A comprehensive life of the key player in the Chinese Communist Revolution whose cautious political skills allowed him to survive the perilous chaos under Mao Zedong for five decades. As Chen, a leading scholar on modern Chinese history and the Cold War, writes in this deeply researched biography, Zhou Enlai (1898-1976) embodied the "deep paradoxes and enduring complexities" of China's revolutionary era. The author chronicles how the once-beloved premier is undergoing fresh consideration, and he offers an instructive portrait. Born into a "declining mandarin's family" in Huai'an, in Jiangsu Province, young Zhou was sent to live with relatives when both his mother and his adopted mother died when he was 9. His uncles emphasized his education, and he excelled. After studying in Japan, he returned to China in 1919. Radicalized by the nationalist May Fourth Movement that year, Zhou was "genuinely ashamed of China's backwardness and deeply worried that the very survival of China and the Chinese nation was imperiled," and he "angrily condemned the imperialist aggression of the West and Japan against China." Zhou joined the fledgling Communist Party in 1922 and toiled with future CCP leaders such as Mao and Deng Xiaoping, navigating the civil war against the nationalists while also expelling the Japanese invaders. With Mao's ascendance, Zhou often had to perform self-criticism and avoid shining too brightly, suppressing his views about Mao's "rash advance" during the Great Leap Forward. Sadly, Zhou failed to defend many who were "purged," including his brother. Noting how many Chinese viewed Zhou as a "nearly perfect individual [who] served as an imaginary bridge linking people's painful recollections of an excruciating past and their boundless hope for a bright -future," Chen delivers an authoritative, incisive look at an unquestionably significant historical figure. An excellent biography and capable deconstruction of the labyrinthine mechanics behind the CCP's development. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
