The evaluation of Zhou Enlai, taking into account various opinions, can be divided into three categories: first, the official representatives of the Chinese Communist Party, efforts to build a glorious image of Zhou Enlai; secondly, some people who love Zhou Enlai in the private sector, believe that Zhou Enlai has a humane taste. The third is to scold Zhou as worthless, saying that he is despicable, shameless and inhumane, wagging his tail in front of Mao Zedong and acting as a helper to the tiger. Li Zhisui, who had been Mao’s personal physician for many years, said that Zhou was a man of low character who whispered in front of Mao. All three evaluations can be applied to Zhou Enlai’s head, and each can find some examples to corroborate, but none of them can justify the contradictory phenomenon.
After nearly twenty years of skeptical thinking and material collection, the author feels that he can make a comprehensive explanation of Zhou Enlai’s contradictory phenomenon. For the sake of convenience, I will basically analyze it in accordance with the history itself.
The mystery of the Director of the Political Department of the Whampoa Military Academy
In 1924, Zhou Enlai arrived in Guangzhou after returning from France via Moscow. As soon as he arrived in Guangzhou, he was appointed acting director of the Political Department of the newly established Whampoa Military Academy (soon to be the full director) and director of the Political Department of the First Army of the National Revolutionary Army, with the rank of lieutenant general. At the age of 26, Zhou was a young man with great ambition and enthusiasm. How could he have been able to study abroad for a few years and then return to such an important position?
In fact, the key to everything is that Zhou Enlai carried a letter of recommendation in his arms on his way back to China. The letter was written by Dimitrov, the secretary of the Executive Committee of the Third International, a close friend of Stalin and the leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party. The recipient of the letter was Borodin, who was sent by the Soviet Union to China to help Sun Yat-sen train the army and establish the Whampoa Military Academy. As soon as Borodin saw the letter, without saying a word, he appointed Zhou Enlai as the director of the political department of the Whampoa Military Academy and the director of the political department of the First Army of the National Revolutionary Army, and gave the rank of lieutenant general to the young man who had never been in battle before.
Dimitrov was also the chairman of the World Communist Intelligence Bureau at that time, and Zhou Enlai happened to be the founder of the Chinese Communist secret service. He knew very well what he had studied and trained in France and in Germany!
For the Third International, Zhou Enlai was a tool to manipulate the CCP, while for the CCP, Zhou was a representative of the Third International. It was an open secret that the Communist Party could not even hide this fact from the history of the Chinese Communist Party.
In addition to becoming a close friend of Dimitrov during his stay in Europe, Zhou Enlai also used the European branch to establish a gang system headed by him. The importance of this clique system to his life can be seen simply by looking at the list: Zhu De, Ye Jianying, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yi, Li Fuchun, Li Lisan, Li Weihan, Nie Rongzhen, Cai Hesen (member of the Politburo after his return to China and once secretary of the Central Committee), Yun Daying (secretary of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee after his return to China), Chen Yannian (son of Chen Duxiu and secretary of the Guangdong District Committee), Xiang Guangyu (wife of Cai Hesen and member of the Cai Chang (sister of Cai Hesen, member of the Central Committee). (The above list is from memory)
The Mystery of the Invincible Man
The Communist Party of China (CPC) cooperation broke up, Chiang Kai-shek went on a killing spree against the CPC in Shanghai, and the CPC began to openly prepare its own armed forces. The background and role of Zhou Enlai became exceptionally important. Following the instruction of the Third International, he and Zhu De, He Long and Ye Jianying instigated the Nanchang Uprising (before that, the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee under Zhou Enlai already had a military department, so the real founder of the CPC army was Zhou Enlai). Soon after, Mao Zedong staged the Autumn Harvest Uprising. Mao’s grassroots nature and spontaneity made him choose to go to the remote and sheltered mountains to take over the mountains. Zhou Enlai followed the instruction of the Third International to attack Guangzhou, but only halfway, his men and horses were lost 70% to 80%, and the rest of his troops had to be led by Zhu De to Jinggang Mountain to take refuge in Mao’s territory. Zhou Enlai still went to Shanghai, Guangzhou and other major cities to plan urban riots and assassinations.
According to the Soviet view, the only way to succeed in the socialist revolution was to start city uprisings. Although Zhou Enlai lost many battles and nine of his men and horses were lost, he always steadfastly carried out the instructions of the Third International. Stalin was very dissatisfied with Mao Zedong’s presence in the mountains and accused him of the “rich peasant line”. Zhou Enlai was ordered to go from Shanghai to Ruijin, Jiangxi, to sit in person, sent Chen Yi to take away Mao’s military power, removed Mao’s position and expelled from the Politburo.
As a result of blind obedience to Stalin, even the base in Jiangxi disintegrated and had to withdraw and transfer for the Long March. As a result of continuous defeats, morale was low and people were disorganized, and a large number of soldiers deserted every day. A team of 100,000 people ran to Zunyi, only 20,000 remained, and the team faced complete disintegration.
Every time the CCP made a major mistake, someone was thrown out as a scapegoat. The first time was Chen Duxiu, the second time was Qu Qubai, and the third time was Li Lisan. The specific leader and executor of the second and third left-leaning lines was Zhou Enlai, but his position in the Party was not shaken in any way. As for this fourth so-called Wang Ming line, Zhou was more responsible for it militarily. Strangely enough, Mao and Wang pointed their fingers directly at Bogu when they made trouble at the Zunyi Conference, without hurting Zhou half a word. At the Zunyi meeting, Zhou Enlai was at first a peacemaker, allowing both sides of the saber-rattling to speak calmly, and after a day and night of meetings, by the next day, Zhou Enlai turned to support Mao.
The newly formed three-member military group of the leadership core still had Zhou Enlai at the top of the list. The ranking order was Mao Zedong, Wang Jiaxiang, and Zhou Enlai. The reason why Zhou Enlai could not collapse, check the list of members who attended the Zunyi Conference will know that Zhou Enlai’s power almost accounted for 80% to 90%, Mao Zedong such as challenging Zhou Enlai at the same time certainly can not win, and may also meet its own bad luck. Besides, even if he could win, the result would be that the routed army would be split in two, becoming Zhou Enlai’s army and Mao Zedong’s army, which would also mean that everyone would be destroyed by Chiang Kai-shek. Secondly, this army needed Soviet material assistance, and to make this division of foreign aid continuous, the leadership must have someone Moscow trusts.
Mao Zedong did live up to the expectations and achieved victory in the Long March. The victory was not due to Mao’s wise command, as the Chinese Communist Party boasted. Mao did win one or two small battles, but was eventually able to escape from Chiang Kai-shek’s siege by a ruthless conspiracy.
The initial intention of the Long March was to divide the troops in two ways and break out to Xinjiang or Inner Mongolia at the Sino-Soviet junction, where the Soviet Union was established as a base. Chiang Kai-shek, of course, would not let the Communist Party succeed in its plot and pursued the Communist Party along its escape route without stopping.
After Mao took over command, he ordered the Red Army in the name of the Party Central Committee to continue northward as originally planned, and pretended to agree on a rendezvous point, so that the Red Army’s whereabouts were completely exposed, attracting Chiang Kai-shek to move his troops to chase them, while he and Zhou Enlai quietly slipped away to Yan’an in northern Shaanxi. The Red Fourth Front Army led by Zhang Guotao was much more numerous than Mao’s Red Front Army. The Fourth Red Front Army, which was tricked into serving as bait, was almost completely wiped out. In order to cover up their own despicable intentions, Mao and Zhou backtracked and said that Zhang Guotao had led the army to escape without permission and set up another central committee, giving Zhang Guotao the name of a conspirator.
The first thing Mao Zedong did when he arrived in Yan’an with his feet firmly planted and his breath settled was to kick out Wang Jiaxiang. Mao did not trust people from Moscow, but for the two tigers to co-exist, there must be a middle figure who can play a buffer role, this figure can not be too deep with Moscow (too deep Mao Zedong does not trust), and can not have their own power and organizational system (Zhou Enlai does not feel comfortable), but in the party should have considerable seniority. Mao Zedong selected Liu Shaoqi, who had been engaged in underground work and whose underground organization had been largely destroyed by Chiang Kai-shek, who had worked with Mao, who had been to Moscow for meetings, who had no power of his own in the Party, but who had considerable seniority. This is a role that can act as an intermediary. After Mao put Liu Shaoqi up, after several years of operation, had planned to cleanse a group of Zhou Enlai’s forces, which is the so-called Yan’an rectification campaign. For this half-century-old rectification campaign, the Chinese Communist Party until now, the relevant files refused to disclose, so far only rumors of Zhou Enlai in the rectification of the wind made a check, it seems that his strength has not been hit hard, because his position is still as solid as ever.
Who does Liu Shaoqi hate most?
Until now, public opinion at home and abroad still sees China’s Cultural Revolution as a power struggle between Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi, or a struggle between Mao’s line and Liu Shaoqi’s line. If this is true, Liu Shaoqi was defeated half a year after the Cultural Revolution began, and Mao had already won the power struggle, so why did he delay ending the Cultural Revolution and continue it until his death, when someone else would end it? If the purpose of the continuation was to eradicate the remnants of Liu Shaoqi’s power, why were the vast majority of the downed cadres at all levels “liberated” and reappointed after Lin Biao’s downfall?
To see the Cultural Revolution as a struggle between Mao and Liu obviously does not answer such a question. The number one capitalist, Liu Shaoqi, was handed over to the Red Guards and beaten up and died in prison; the number two capitalist, Deng Xiaoping, was protected and placed in a farm in Jiangxi; the number three capitalist, Tao Chuan, ended up like Liu Shaoqi; the number four capitalist, Tan Zhenlin, made a scene in Huairen Hall and scolded Jiang Qing in front of his face, but was left unscathed.
How can these phenomena be explained?
According to the above, those who were protected from the Red Guards’ frenzied onslaught were Zhou Enlai’s direct line.
As the saying goes, the dog will see its master. If Mao Zedong is equally unforgiving to Zhou’s direct line, it is an open battle with Zhou and his faction, Mao can easily put Liu Shaoqi to death, but is not sure to break Zhou’s power. Therefore, it can not help but have some taboo, can only take advantage of the fight Liu Yu wind, by the way, sweep the camp of Zhou, do not dare to direct war against the front.
The Chinese Communist Party is still shy and reluctant to publicly admit the fight between Mao and Zhou during the Cultural Revolution, and even absurdly insists that Zhou was a close comrade of Mao. When they preach this, they obviously forget that this is detrimental to Zhou’s “glorious image”. Mao launched the criminal Cultural Revolution, and Zhou was always his close comrade, so wouldn’t he be equally culpable? But they could not promote the conflict between Mao and Zhou for the sake of his “glorious image”. Because during the Cultural Revolution, Zhou Enlai did a lot of things to support and defend Mao.
He did his best to resist Mao in only one place: he did his best to maintain the position and power of his gang system.
This was his supreme principle. For the sake of this principle, he could either pander to Mao or resist him. For this principle he can sacrifice any social justice and ideals.
As for the people outside this gang system, it is not a problem for them to suffer sacrifice because of his principle. In the case of Liu Shaoqi, it was most clearly revealed that he, a “great man” with a “glorious image”, was in fact a power-hungry, selfish, self-protective, and cowardly person.
As mentioned earlier, Liu Shaoqi did not have his own gang power in the Communist Party, he was promoted by Mao and praised Mao’s start, and only sixty-one people defeated him and his group of traitors in the Cultural Revolution, of which the highest status is only the Secretary of the Central Secretariat and Mayor of Beijing Peng Zhen and the former Minister of Public Security, before the Cultural Revolution was transferred to the Chief of General Staff Luo Ruifu. Most of the rest belong to the propaganda system of education.
Liu Shaoqi with these few powerless people on the anti-Mao Zedong, is not the benefit of wisdom? Or he opposed Mao just Mao’s suspicion and thus suffer a sinking injustice?
According to the materials available, Liu Shaoqi although not blatantly anti-Mao, but the move to hollow out Mao has indeed been several years. After the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the country was plunged into a famine, and in ’61 a conference of 7,000 people was held. At the meeting, Liu Shaoqi, though not named, said bluntly that the leader was not a god, but also had made mistakes, that we should not follow blindly, and that shouting long live was feudalism. Mao was forced to make a review at this meeting and announced that he would retire to the second line and would no longer be involved in economic issues. Before the Cultural Revolution, Mao wanted to publish Yao Wenyuan’s article in People’s Daily or Beijing Daily, but it was ignored. This shows that Liu and Peng did not take Mao into consideration.
Where did Liu Shaoqi, who was not much different from the commander-in-chief, get the power to force Mao Zedong to curb his momentum and be in a semi-retired state?
The conclusion is simple: Liu left Mao’s camp and formed an alliance with Zhou Enlai.
(After 1960, Deng Xiaoping handed over all the work of the Central Secretariat to his deputy, Peng Zhen, and played bridge himself, saying nothing at Politburo meetings and sitting far away from Mao. (This indicates that the Zhou faction had long premeditated Liu Shaoqi to act as a pawn in direct conflict with Mao).
When the two of them formed an alliance, the power at the top of the Central Committee was basically under control. Among the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee, Mao was left with only one diehard, Lin Biao, who almost never asked about politics since the founding of the country and rarely attended Politburo meetings. One reason is that he has suffered a gunshot wound to his spinal nerve, his body is very weak, afraid of wind and light, cold and heat, on the other hand, he knows that accompanying the ruler is like accompanying a tiger, and he has the suspicion of high merit to shake the master, so he might as well retreat from the three. So, in the Politburo Standing Committee, Mao actually became a loner.
As for the power in the army, Liu Shaoqi is not half, but Zhou Enlai is at least equal to Mao Zedong. And among the eight marshals, Zhou Enlai’s power is far greater than Mao Zedong’s. (Originally the top ten marshals, Mao cut off his loyalist Peng Dehuai at the Lushan Conference, and Luo Ronghuan died of illness before the Cultural Revolution. Therefore, the ten marshals to the Cultural Revolution only eight people: Zhu De, Lin Biao, Liu Bo Cheng, He Long, Chen Yi, Ye Jianying, Nie Rongzhen, Xu Qianqian).
According to Zhou and Liu’s calculations, they adopted the tactic of gradually hollowing out Mao to secure the ticket. In the party’s senior cadres, after Mao’s prestige was greatly reduced, Liu Shaoqi’s prestige rose year by year to the point where he was on par with Mao before the Cultural Revolution (the heads of leaders hanging in people’s homes were also Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi side by side).
However, they made the biggest mistake in their design: in order to paralyze Mao and to cover their own intentions, they hollowed out Mao while at the same time praising and blowing Mao Zedong in public opinion.
The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you are getting into.
The wiretapping incident was first disclosed by the Red Guards in the early days of the Cultural Revolution when they exposed Yang Shangkun’s crimes, but the details were not clearly disclosed, and the large print only said that Yang Shangkun had engaged in secret service tactics against Chairman Mao, the great leader, by installing a wiretap in his office. According to Li Zhisui’s book, the process by which the bug was exposed was as follows: Mao’s special train stopped at Changsha station and the entourage on board got off and went for a walk on the platform. When correspondent XX saw Zhang Yufeng on the platform, he imitated Mao’s accent and joked with Zhang Yufeng, and the words the correspondent imitated were Mao’s words flirting with Zhang Yufeng in the carriage. Zhang Yufeng was horrified and immediately returned to the carriage to report Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong called the correspondent up to the carriage to ask, the correspondent said Luo Ruiqing set up. Mao asked Luo Ruiqing again, Luo Ruiqing said that Yang Shangkun according to the resolution of the Politburo meeting asked him to install a wiretap in Mao’s carriage, so that the Politburo members to keep abreast of Chairman Mao’s instructions so as to implement, Luo Ruiqing and took out the Politburo documents about the resolution to Mao Zedong to see. Mao read it without making a sound, seemingly not taking it seriously, but returned to Beijing and decided to carry out the Cultural Revolution and convinced Lin Biao to support him.
In order to facilitate his own deployment of the counterattack, Mao drove out the Minister of Public Security, who was always with him, by promoting Luo Ruiqing to Chief of the General Staff. Luo Ruiqing thought Mao could be hoodwinked by sweet talk, and published an article in the Red Flag magazine touting Mao. They thought that Mao was being hollowed out and that they were being portrayed as the best successor to Mao’s ideas, so that Mao would be powerless to fight back.
They underestimated Mao.
Mao’s carefully planned counterattack was something they did not expect.
Taking advantage of the cult of the individual that his opponents had engaged in to paralyze themselves, Mao lent his strength and simply went out of Beijing, hiding in Shanghai and Hangzhou, to launch the Cultural Revolution directly through radio. Mao ordered the central radio station to broadcast the large-character posters of Nie Yuanzi of Peking University, inciting millions of ignorant people and fanatical youths to revolt and quickly paralyzing the whole country.
Mao was by now a god among the people. If the people knew that anyone dared to disrespect this god, they would flock to him and bite him to death and tear him apart.
As a precaution, on the eve of calling for a nationwide rebellion, Mao transferred troops from the Beijing garrison in the name of practice drills and secretly present Lin Biao to drive the 38th Army into Beijing.
For Lin Biao, if he did not participate in this power struggle and did not transfer his troops to save the country, Liu Zhou would still remove him if he gained power. Therefore, Lin Biao has also participated in the deification of Mao’s great contain singing since 1963, can not let the successor’s image patent only belongs to Liu Zhou’s faction.
Mao transferred troops into the capital, rather than really determined to make a military duel with Zhou Enlai, it is more likely to set up a dueling stance. Mao knew the character of Zhou Enlai well. Sure enough, Zhou Enlai, after a moment of panic in the face of the unexpected counterattack and Mao’s intention to do something brutal, shamefully retreated and chose to abandon Liu Shaoqi in order to save himself. Zhou Enlai’s retreat made Mao’s dangerous move of seeking victory in chaos easy to succeed.
As the saying goes, it is better to fight than not to die.
Mao Zedong was beaten several times by his father when he was a child, and also by his father when he was in junior high school. One day, his father wanted to beat him again, Mao went to the pond and said, “If you fight again, I’ll jump in and drown. His father was so frightened by his vision that he didn’t dare to beat him again. This victory, extremely important to Mao’s life, so that Mao tasted the sweetness of breaking the pot and going out to do, Mao does not follow the normal rules, love to go to extremes, and this incident has a great relationship.
The Chinese Communist Party’s defense of Zhou said that Zhou did so in order to take care of the overall situation. At that time, China’s factories were shut down, schools were closed, guns were fired everywhere and there was a civil war, and many people died. There are still many ordinary people who are willing to lose their lives to defend Liu Shaoqi, compared to Zhou Enlai, who is in a key position and holds a lot of power, who has more social justice and cares more about the fate of the country?
Zhou Enlai betrayed Liu Shaoqi, and also turned his back on the many people who dared to fight with their lives. The so-called consideration of the overall situation was only to protect his own interests and those of the bureaucratic clique.
Zhou Enlai’s Confucian weakness, no political ideals and human principles, in a critical situation first of all the character of the philosophers to protect themselves, so that Mao Zedong easily won the victory to get rid of Liu Shaoqi. But Mao Zedong did not give up, for Mao, only to mess up Zhou Enlai, the absolute authority of the position can be truly consolidated. Therefore, just as Liu Shaoqi quickly collapsed, Mao deployed an attack on Zhou, first by using a Red Guards group called Linkage to post large-character posters on the streets of Beijing, exposing that Zhou Enlai had been arrested during the April 12 massacre in 1927 and had published an announcement in the newspaper that Wu Hao (Zhou’s code name at the time) had left the Party in order to be released. According to the ultra-left politics of the Cultural Revolution, anyone who was arrested and published an announcement of his defection from the Party was a traitor.
Zhou Enlai himself explained this experience by saying that after his arrest, Kuomintang soldiers did not recognize him and thought he was an ordinary member of the Party. He said that he did not know about the announcement, but that Bai Yang posted it in his name after he was released from prison in order to be accountable to his superiors.
The traitorous material published in the big-character posters on the streets of Beijing, if the person exposed was someone else, the person exposed would have been immediately sent to the eighteenth circle of hell, but when it came to Zhou Enlai, it was the head of the Red Guard organization “Link” who posted the big-character posters and was arrested on counter-revolutionary charges. The outside world, unaware of the incident, also interpreted the incident as Mao Zedong could not stand the Red Guard’s nonsense to his close comrade Zhou Enlai’s head.
In fact, the material for the big-character poster was provided to the Red Guards by Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng, and the whole incident was planned by Mao Zedong in Hangzhou. After the big-character posters came out on the streets of Beijing, the Red Guards, instigated by Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng, also stormed Zhongnanhai and surrounded the State Council, besieging Zhou Enlai for a day and a night, no matter how Zhou persuaded, the Red Guards refused to withdraw. As a result, someone in the army came out to protect Zhou (according to Zhou himself told the American journalist Snow who visited Beijing three years later that someone in the army heard that he was under siege in Zhongnanhai and brought troops into Beijing to clash with the Red Guards, and the army shot and killed someone). Mao Zedong, who was in Hangzhou closely following the developments, saw the danger of a firefight and flipped his hand to arrest the leader of the linkage who posted the big-character posters and launched the siege of Zhongnanhai for counter-revolutionary crimes to show that he had nothing to do with the incident.
This made Mao Zedong realize more clearly that it was impossible to defeat Zhou Enlai without getting rid of his power and influence in the army. Therefore, Mao’s second action to mess with Zhou Enlai in the Cultural Revolution was to raise the slogan of seizing a small group of capitalists in the army through Lin Biao and the Central Cultural Revolution Group, Wang Li, Guan Feng and Qi Benyu, in order to purge Zhou Enlai’s power in the army. However, Zhou Enlai’s forces in the army resisted fiercely, and there was a showdown, which was the famous fuss over Huairen Hall and the Wuhan mutiny during the Cultural Revolution.
The “rightist rebellion” in Huairen Hall is well known, so let’s not talk about it here, but let’s take a look at the Wuhan mutiny that took place six months later, in the summer of ’67.
Mao wanted the army to support the local leftists, but the Wuhan Military District was in favor of the right. Mao sent Wang Li, head of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, to Wuhan to launch a campaign to seize a handful of capitalists in the army. Chen Zaidao, the commander of the Wuhan Military Region, and Zhong Hanhua, the political commissar, simply arrested Wang Li. When they heard that Mao himself had gone to Wuhan to supervise the battle, they mobilized hundreds of thousands of citizens to surround Wuhan airport to intercept Mao, who saw that the situation was bad and rushed off. He asked Zhou Enlai to come out to calm the situation. When Zhou arrived at Wuhan, he said to Chen Zaidao, “Hand over your military power and come with me to Beijing, you will be fine. Chen Zaidao obediently followed Zhou to Beijing. After going to Beijing, there was really nothing wrong. Because Mao Zedong saw the situation is not good, throwing out Wang, Guan, Qi as sacrifices, said the seizure of a handful of military is to destroy my Great Wall, to Wang Guan Qi “to return my Great Wall”, these three fools were thrown into prison.
Although the handful of people in the army gave up, but the split in the army has been formed, in order to pacify and appease the military community, but also to consolidate the position of the Gang of Four, Mao had to sacrifice Lin Biao in exchange for army unity.
When the movement in the army failed, Mao used his brain to cross Zhou Enlai in public opinion, which is the origin of the criticism of Confucius and Zhou Gong. But again, it ended in Mao’s defeat.
The Chinese Communist Party did not disclose any material on how Zhou crushed Mao’s attack. Therefore, overseas public opinion regarded Mao’s forced retreat as Jiang Qing’s attempt to screw Zhou Enlai without Mao’s knowledge, and put the blame on Jiang Qing’s head. In fact, Jiang Qing had already said in one sentence during his trial, “I am a dog of Chairman Mao, and I will bite whoever he tells me to bite.”
The third time against Zhou, Mao used Jiang Qing personally. Mao had already played all the big cards in his hand at this time. Zhou Enlai only concocted the “Red Queen” incident as a counter-attack, and Jiang Qing fell into the crime of selling out party and state secrets to foreign countries, and immediately lost prestige, and his anger was no longer.
Mao’s victory was only aided by the heavens, living eight months longer than Zhou, but he was unable and did not have enough time to sweep Zhou’s forces, and only defeated Deng Xiaoping. The victory was so short-lived that once Mao died, it was Zhou’s forces that took over the world. Therefore, the result of the Mao-Zhou struggle, the final victory is still Zhou Enlai.
However, as a person and as a politician, did Zhou Enlai really win?
Many people justified for Zhou that if Zhou confronted Mao openly at that time, not only could he not protect others, even he himself would collapse. But at least from the facts that have been made public so far, such a conclusion should not be drawn at all.
If he had had more courage to think about the interests of the whole nation, instead of being an accomplice to the tiger, why would the Chinese people have suffered for 11 years during the Cultural Revolution?
If Zhou had collapsed as quickly as Liu Shaoqi, the Cultural Revolution could have ended sooner, but this cowardly man had so much power that the two armies were at loggerheads and the people were tied up and beheaded for ten years.
Zhou Enlai life if there are regrets, will regret abandoning Liu Shaoqi, as a shameful concession it! When Liu Shaoqi died in prison, I am afraid that the one who cursed and hated the most was not Mao Zedong, but Zhou Enlai!
Zhou Enlai’s acting skills
In the second session of the Ninth Communist Party held in Lushan in the summer of 1970, Mao Zedong suddenly took the excuse to criticize Chen Boda and implicate Lin Biao, sending a message to the participants that Mao was unhappy with Lin Biao. After the meeting, Zhou Enlai did not immediately return to the capital to deal with business, but left ninety-nine senior party, government and military cadres down to listen to his report on the living and learning of Mao Zedong Thought. Last week, instead of talking about the current situation, the meeting reviewed history and disclosed the fact that Chen Yi was sent to seize Mao Zedong’s military power. The participants had no knowledge of this history, they had always thought that Zhou was a close comrade of Mao, and now they were extremely shocked to hear Zhou shake out this past story. Of course, Zhou had an introduction before shaking out, saying that although Mao Zedong’s thought is easy to understand, but learn once or twice can not really understand. Then he confessed the serious mistakes he had made, and finally summed up the root cause of his mistakes, which was due to the fact that he became a big official at a young age, with a heavy addiction to officialdom, and was afraid of losing his official position by going against Moscow’s instructions, so he blindly implemented Moscow’s line. Zhou Enlai called this the most serious lesson in his life.
In this speech, the explicit side of Zhou Enlai disclosed at least two pieces of information: that he had been higher than Mao Zedong in the Party; and that he and Mao had had serious problems with each other.
What surprised the audience at the time was Zhou’s use of words like “being an official” and “official addiction,” words that after the founding of the Communist Party were usually used only for the bureaucrats of the old society, that is, only for the enemy, and the Communist Party called its own officials cadres. This taboo was not broken until the end of 1979, when the Guangming Daily published an article titled “The economy must not be dictated by the will of the governor”, causing a national sensation. The sensation was not the content of the article, but the word “official” in the title, and the people said that this is great, the Communist Party cadres are also called officials. So this article about respecting the laws of economy actually had a spiritual liberating effect on the whole country. Since then, the people have used the word “official” to describe the Communist Party, which has become a popular word, and do not feel any special. One can imagine how surprised the audience would be when Zhou Enlai used this word for self-criticism at a lecture in 1970. On the surface, it seems that Zhou Enlai is strictly self-critical, but those present are all members of the Central Committee, are mixed out in the officialdom, how simple-minded? And Zhou Enlai chose to leave the audience are the strength of the people, to fill the facade of the workers, peasants and soldiers members, he would not invite them to listen to this report.
Several years later, one of the listeners who was present, the head of a military district recalled the incident, saying.
“I was very shocked; first, the shock of knowing this history for the first time, and second, I felt something was wrong, as if Chairman Mao and Zhou Enlai were not so friendly either. But at that time, I did not dare to think much about this kind of thing, in case I accidentally said it, I would get myself into big trouble. Later, when it came to the criticism of Lin and Confucius movement, Jiang Qing obviously wanted to draw fire to Premier Zhou, it dawned on me that the report of the Lushan meeting, it seems that the Premier had known that Chairman Mao wanted to screw him.”
This is the real intent of Zhou Enlai’s so-called severe self-criticism. He repeatedly stressed at the meeting that Mao’s words were not immediately understood, in fact, implying that the audience should think more deeply about this Lushan meeting. Zhou understood that Mao had to sacrifice Lin Biao under the pressure of discontent and confrontation in the army, so that he would be in direct conflict with Mao. He wanted to let senior Communist Party cadres have a psychological preparation in advance, when Mao wanted to remove him, they will support who, Zhou Enlai especially stressed his own fear of losing his official back then, blindly obeyed the highest instructions, which in fact implied that the bureaucrats present, you do not fear losing your official blindly obeyed the highest instructions, once cast a big mistake, lifelong regret.
Zhou Enlai another unusual move is, after making a report, sent a copy to the Lushan Archives for preservation, and only as a general confidential document preservation, in fact, is to allow his speech to circulate.
Similar high profile, manifested in Zhou Enlai has been many times. At the Zunyi Conference he likewise achieved his goal by way of self-criticism. When Bogu and Mao Zedong, Wang Jiaxiang and Peng Dehuai were arguing, and Bogu resolutely refused to admit his mistake and give way, Zhou Enlai stood up and spoke, saying that as the military minister, he should take the main responsibility for the military defeat, and therefore requested the Party Central Committee to relieve him of his post as military minister. This high profile performance of Zhou Enlai not only made Bo Gu lose his backing, but also earned himself praise, and Bo Gu was forced to give in and hand over his power, and Bo Gu was finished when he handed over his power, while Zhou Enlai remained firmly seated in the core of the Central Committee.
The moral outlook and the image of a humble gentleman to cover his true purpose is Zhou Enlai’s mastery. Of course we cannot say that he was without morals. He can show morality when it does not harm his fundamental interests, but when the interests are at stake, morality becomes a means to his end. He played it so skillfully and performed it so successfully that when he was alive, almost no one could recognize it.
The same is true of Zhou Enlai’s “humane” performance. Try an example.
In the Xi’an Incident, Zhou expressed to Chiang Kai-shek several ideas of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhou finished speaking is not as the outside world said, took out the agreement with Zhang Xueliang to force Chiang to sign, but the conversation turned, chatting about family life, the topic naturally turned to the child, Chiang Kai-shek said he and Jingguo cut off for a long time, miss him very much. Zhou Enlai pretended to be unaware of the matter, saying that we can find and send back your son for President Chiang through Soviet relations.
The key moment of negotiation chatted about family life, inadvertently talked about the child, is it a coincidence? This is clearly the result of Zhou’s careful planning in advance, even Chiang Kai-shek may not be able to recognize his intentions at the moment, otherwise he would not have taken up his topic. The agreement was signed in such a humane atmosphere, but in fact it implied a threat.
This is Zhou Enlai!
Even if he is in a dominant position, he must be wrapped in sugar when he gives you the drug.
Zhou Enlai also had a profile of being iron-faced and selfless. The Chinese Communist Party loved to promote the idea that Zhou Enlai was clean and honest and never showed favoritism. We will not deny that Zhou Enlai was indeed incorruptible compared to the bureaucrats who used their power for money and corruption. But just because Zhou’s selfishness did not manifest itself in money and helping friends and relatives does not mean that he was not selfish. His selfishness was expressed in his lust for power, in the fact that he only valued his official position and put the interests of the country and the nation out of his mind. If not being greedy for money is praiseworthy, then Zhang Chunqiao, one of the “Gang of Four”, was no less clean and honest than Zhou Enlai, so why did the CCP put him in jail? Obviously the CCP has a double standard in this regard, depending on who you are first, and only secondly on the quality of the person.
Zhou Enlai also sometimes used his iron face to cover up his callous inhumanity. As in the case of Sun Weishi mentioned at the beginning of this article, Zhou Enlai’s reasoning must have been, “Since the Party organization has the material that she colluded with the Soviet Union, I, as a Party member, must obey the organization’s decision and cannot take sides with her just because she is my stepdaughter.” In fact, he knew very well in his heart that Mao Zedong and Jiang Qing wanted to open a gap through Sun Weishi to get materials that he still had collusion with the Soviet Union. In order to show that he had no ghost in his heart, Zhou Enlai gave the go-ahead to arrest Sun Weishi.
Zhou has done the same kind of performance countless times. At the beginning of the Long March, the Red Army dismantled the printing presses and took them away, but they left behind Qu Qiubai, who had lost his power and was seriously ill, which was clearly a way to kill him.
It was Zhou Enlai who informed Qu Qiubai to stay behind, and he did so in the name of the decision of the Party Central Committee. By sacrificing Qu Qiubai, Zhou Enlai was missing an important witness who could prove his many mistakes in leading the revolution (Qu Qiubai wrote “Extra Words” in a KMT prison, without hurting Zhou Enlai or any Communist by half a sentence). Also thrown out of the Long March ranks was Zhou Enlai’s close friend Chen Yi. Chen Yi offended Bogu and Soviet advisor Li De, but Zhou Enlai also did not say a word for his old friend. Also, in order not to reveal the whereabouts of the Long March, they killed tens of thousands of soldiers and junior officers who were suspected of being unreliable before they left. This was the famous mass grave incident. Zhou was one of the main leaders at the time. When the stakes were high, Zhou the man had no moral righteousness. Abandoning and sacrificing his friends was a consistent part of Zhou’s performance. Because he was an extremely selfish and cowardly power-hungry person at heart, it is not surprising that he abandoned Liu Shaoqi and He Long at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Of course, he also had many stories of supposedly protecting his victims under pressure, none of which would shake his power position, but rather made him more popular and gave him another bargaining chip in the contest with Mao.
◇Conclusion
For nearly half a century, the CCP, through its complete monopoly of public opinion, has desperately boasted for itself and glorified its moral image, as if only communists have high morals and noble sentiments. Nowadays, they only have the “shining image” of Zhou Enlai left in their hands. However, this “shining image” is so pale, so unable to withstand the test of history. How can China’s moral standard be improved with such an image as a moral resource for all people?
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