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| Author | Gao Wenqian |
|---|---|
| Language | English(Translated from Chinese language by Peter Rand and Lawrence R. Sullivan) |
| Genre | Biography |
| Publisher | New York: Public Affairs |
| Publication date | 2007 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 344 |
| ISBN | 1586486454 |
Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary, ISBN:1586486454, is a book written by Gao Wenqian, previously a researcher at CPC Central Party Literature Research Center, where he penned the official biographies of Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong. The book was published in 2008 by Public Affair in English. Based on secret and classified Chinese archives documents smuggled out of China, the book is a biography of Zhou Enlai, Premier of China from 1949 to 1976, the most important and mythologized communist China leader. Zhou, the greatest Chinese political survivor, is portrayed as "artful, crafty, and politically supple", qualities that enable Zhou to remain at the center stage of Chinese politics for fifty tears, through the turbulent years of Long March and Cultural Revolution.
Introduction
Andrew Nathen (China scholar) writes in the introduction: Zhou Enlai was a man *“unique…in his capacity to endure abasement”;
- was Mao’s “indispensable yet despised assistant...(and) enabler”
- had a “servant mentality”
- possessed “an inability to take existential risks, a psychological need to be another leader’s number two.”
Reviews
- "Gao points out, the collapse of the former Soviet Union and East European Communist countries began with the demystification of official history and the re-evaluation of major historical events and people. This is his contribution to that process in his native country." -- Tribune, December 30th, 2007
- "Zhou Enlai, usually obeyed him(Mao Zedong), at first because they shared his ruthlessness, and later, understandably if contemptibly, to save themselves." -- Far Eastern Economic Review, December Issue
- "a valuable and revealing book on the brutish and incredibly cruel nature of the Maoist regime..." -- BBC History Magazine, January Issue
- "an incredibly fascinating eyewitness or well researched account about a man the West knew little about." -- Daily Kos, December 12th, 2007
Doug Bandow
Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute has this to say about the book:
Reading Zhou(The book) leaves one frustrated by yet another example of the banality of evil. There is nothing to suggest that Zhou was filled with blood lust, enjoyed killing supposed counter-revolutionaries, plotted to imprison tens of millions of regime opponents, or was indifferent to the mass starvation and hardship around him. Indeed, he counseled colleagues and protected them, to the degree possible, from the madness of the Cultural Revolution, essentially an intra-party civil war which ruined the lives of millions of people, including many loyal communist apparatchiks. Like Stalin’s purges, the Cultural Revolution was bloody – estimates of the number of dead start at around 500,000 and top out at three million – and was no less mad, convulsing China for years.
Jonathan D. Spence
Jonathan Spence suggested that the title of the book is "deliberately sardonic" and the book shows a Zhou Enlai which is "fallible, often devious, and capable of great cruelty to his friends and fellow revolutionaries"; moreover, Zhou was often “trailing like a faithful dog” behind Mao, and prone to use “rhetorical babble” whenever doing so in order to survive a bit longer.
Peter Ritter
Peter Ritter of the Time.com, commented that the book: "paints the Premier as thoughtful and scrupulous, yet so blinkered by loyalty to Mao that he sanctioned the arrest of his own brother". The author suggested that Zhou "was an active, if not always enthusiastic, participant..." of the Cultural Revolution and Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, when millions of Chinese died of unnatural death, and an entire generation of Chinese intellectuals was purged and exiled to the countryside. Zhou Enlai was quoted in his hand written letter to Mao's wife Jiang Qing:"From now on you make all the decisions, and I'll make sure they're carried out,"
Reference
- http://www.amazon.com/Zhou-Enlai-Last-Perfect-Revolutionary/dp/158648415X Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary
- http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/may/28/the-mystery-of-zhou-enlai/ The Mystery of Zhou Enlai May 28, 2009 Jonathan D. Spence
- http://www.amazon.com/Zhou-Enlai-Last-Perfect-Revolutionary/dp/158648415X Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary
- http://original.antiwar.com/doug-bandow/2008/01/11/zhou-enlai-the-last-perfect-revolutionary/ Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary by Doug Bandow January 12, 2008
- http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/may/28/the-mystery-of-zhou-enlai/ The Mystery of Zhou Enlai May 28, 2009 Jonathan D. Spence
- http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1678668,00.html#ixzz1B5DfjFjX Saint and Sinner By Peter Ritter Thursday, Nov. 01, 2007