Zhou Enlai Born: China's Master Diplomat
Zhou Enlai served as China's Premier for 26 years, from 1949 until his death in 1976. He survived every purge. While Mao's Cultural Revolution destroyed millions of lives, Zhou stayed in power, sometimes protecting intellectuals from the worst of it, sometimes not. Whether that made him a pragmatic moderate or a complicit enabler has been argued ever since. He and Mao died within eight months of each other in 1976, and when Zhou died first, Mao refused to lower the flags to half-staff. The public mourning was so intense the government suppressed it. The grief spilled into Tiananmen Square anyway. Born March 5, 1898.
March 5, 1898
128 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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