Zhou Enlai

When Gao Wenqian first published this ground-breaking, provocative biography in Hong Kong, it was immediately banned in the People's Republic. Using classified documents spirited out of the China, he offers an objective human portrait of the real Zhou Enlai, the premier of the People's Republic of China from 1949 until his death in 1976. Often touted as the last perfect revolutionary," Zhou is a modern saint" who offered protection to his people during the Cultural Revolution, and an icon who allows modern Chinese to find an admirable figure in what was a traumatic and bloody era. But his greatest gift was to survive, at almost any price, thanks to his acute understanding of where political power resided at any one time.

"a valuable and revealing book on the brutish and incredibly cruel nature of the Maoist regime... For a sense of what life as a top Communist leader under Mao was like look no further." BBC History Magazine "(Gao Wenqian) offers valuable insights into the "brutal mafia-like battle that is Chinese politics". Daily Telegraph"

Gao Wenqian is the former official biographer of Zhou Enlai at the Chinese Communist Party Central Research Office for Documentation and director of the Zhou Enlai Research Group. He lives in Queens, New York.

When Gao Wenqian first published this ground-breaking, provocative biography in Hong Kong, it was immediately banned in the People's Republic. Using classified documents spirited out of the China, he offers an objective human portrait of the real Zhou Enlai, the premier of the People's Republic of China from 1949 until his death in 1976. Often touted as the last perfect revolutionary," Zhou is a modern saint" who offered protection to his people during the Cultural Revolution, and an icon who allows modern Chinese to find an admirable figure in what was a traumatic and bloody era. But his greatest gift was to survive, at almost any price, thanks to his acute understanding of where political power resided at any one time.

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