000 02479aam a2200253 4500
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020 _a9780674659582
082 _a951.05092
_bJ4Z4
100 _aJian, Chen
_9425797
245 _aZhou Enlai: a life
260 _aCambridge
_bHarvard University Press
_c2024
300 _axi, 817 p. : ill.
_bIncludes bibliographical references & index
520 _aZhou Enlai spent twenty-seven years as premier of the People’s Republic of China and ten as its foreign minister. He was the architect of the country’s administrative apparatus and its relationship to the world, as well as its legendary spymaster. Richard Nixon proclaimed him “the greatest statesman of our era.” Yet Zhou has always been overshadowed by Chairman Mao. Chen Jian brings Zhou into the light, offering a nuanced portrait of his complex life as a revolutionary, a master diplomat, and a man with his own vision and aspirations who did much to make China, as well as the larger world, what it is today. Born to a declining mandarin family in 1898, Zhou received a classical education and as a teenager spent time in Japan. As a young man, driven by the desire for China’s development, Zhou embraced the communist revolution as a vehicle of China’s salvation. He helped Mao govern through a series of transformations, including the disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Yet, as Chen shows, Zhou was never a committed Maoist. His extraordinary political and bureaucratic skill, combined with his centrist approaches, enabled him to mitigate the enormous damage caused by Mao’s radicalism. When Zhou died in 1976, the PRC that we know of was not yet visible on the horizon; he never saw glistening twenty-first-century Shanghai or the broader emergence of Chinese capitalism. But it was Zhou’s work that shaped the nation whose influence and power are today felt in every corner of the globe. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674659582
650 _aZhou Enlai, 1898-1976
_9427278
650 _aChinese statesmen - Biography
_9427320
650 _aChina - Politics and government - 20th century
_9427321
650 _aDiplomacy - China - History
_9427322
650 _aChina - Foreign relations
_99952
650 _aPolitical leadership - China
_9427323
650 _aCommunism - China - History
_9427324
650 _aChina - Politics and government
_99953
710 _aBelknap Press
_9427279
942 _2ddc
_cBK
999 _c222170
_d222170