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World Affairs
Vol 2, Number 2 (Apr-Jun 1998)
Zhou Enlai: Master of Diplomacy
| In an exclusive interview with World Affairs, eminent writer Han Suyin, highlights three major aspects of Zhou Enlai, his role as a diplomat, his task of a moderator in Chinese politics, and his feat of a protector of people during periods of extremism. |
Han Suyin (HS): As I knew Zhou, many people in China suggested and encouraged me to write the book. You know, the book has been well-received. In Taiwan, it has become a bestseller where four editions have already been printed.
WA: Have you had opportunities of meeting Zhou Enlai?
HS: Yes, a number of them. The first time I met him was in Geneva when he came to Switzerland with a very large Chinese delegation of about 150 people to participate in the Geneva Conference on Korea and Vietnam. Thereafter, I met him regularly whenever I went to China. If I remember well, I think I met him 10 times, with each of these meetings lasting many hours. This permitted me to know him well — his personality, his thinking, his character, etc. You know, it is important to know the person about whom you are writing, otherwise what you have in front of you are merely documents. They are of course important, but they cannot replace the human dimension. Furthermore, to write his biography, I also met many other people —Chinese and non-Chinese who helped me to gather documentation, to conduct interviews, and to travel extensively in China.
WA: One of the facets of Zhou’s personality — for which he is known outside China — was his interest in international affairs and his remarkable adeptness in conducting diplomatic negotiations.
HS: Zhou was always interested in international politics. As you know he went to France and then to Germany where he began to take interest in what was happening in the world. It was perhaps during his stay in Europe that he developed a world view. Zhou’s great asset in negotiations was that he was a great listener, which is also very Chinese. Besides, Zhou came from a family of intellectuals which also must have greatly contributed to his talent as a negotiator. It must be remembered that even before the 1949 Revolution, he had acquired great experience in negotiating. His negotiations with the Russians and with the Guomindang gave him the necessary skills. Zhou also negotiated with different American delegations which arrived at the Communist Party Headquarters in Yenan. So already, much before the Chinese Revolution, Zhou had developed the reputation of an expert in foreign affairs. It was, therefore, only natural and logical that he, in addition to other responsibilities as prime minister, was given the mandate to look after foreign affairs.
WA: Though the broad framework of China’s foreign policy, presumably, was decided collectively by the party leadership, did Zhou have a wide leverage within that framework? In other words was his own role significant or was he constrained by the vision of the Party and Mao Zedong?
HS: As I said, there is no doubt that Zhou played a crucial role in designing China’s foreign policy. This was natural given the fact that he had a vast knowledge of foreign affairs, whereas the others did not have the same level of expertise. But he couldn’t decide on his own. This is not how things functioned in the Communist Party. The broad framework was collectively decided upon by the party leadership. But within that framework he had a wide leverage — a leverage to act, and a leverage to shape strategy.
WA: Do you know of any situations or circumstances where Zhou may have influenced Mao’s thinking on foreign policy?
HS: Zhou must have had an influence on Mao, if for no other reason but the sheer fact that Zhou was more knowledgeable about foreign affairs. He was familiar with the different configuration of forces operating in the international system. Mao respected Zhou’s judgement, his analysis and his evaluations. But Mao also had his own views regarding the global international picture. Take, for example, the famous decision to open up to the Americans in the seventies. Clearly, it was Mao’s decision, but once it was taken all the diplomatic input that went into the development of Sino-American relations was that of Zhou and his staff.
WA: When one takes the gamut of China’s foreign policy from 1949 until Zhou’s death in 1976, three major crises emerge: crisis with the Americans, crisis with the Russians and crisis with the Indians. How did Zhou handle these crises?
HS: Zhou was involved in all three of them. The crisis with the Americans is easy to understand. First of all, they openly helped and financed the Chiang Kai-shek’s government during the Chinese Civil War. And after the civil war, when Chiang Kai-shek went to Taiwan, the US government assisted the Guomindang. Two, they refused to recognise the new government after the Chinese Revolution. Practically the whole of the US establishment was up in arms against China. In fact, as you may recall, it was a frightening period of contemporary American history, when during the McCarthy era right wing Americans settled scores with those Americans who favoured a more normal attitude towards Communist China. And three, after World War II, the US literally encircled China. They were in Japan, in Korea and in Vietnam after the French moved out.
WA: But all this did not stop the Chinese from maintaining more or less continuous contact with the Americans from 1954 until the Cultural Revolution.
HS: Yes, this is true. It was useful for both the parties to inform each other and test each other. This is a good example of Chinese flexibility. The Americans were considered their adversaries, and yet the Chinese maintained contact with the US to find out what they were thinking and to inform them of their own perception.
WA: Did you have any contact with the Americans on behalf of the Chinese?
HS: No, I did not have any contact with the Americans on behalf of the Chinese. You know, I was blacklisted by the US Government. And yet, despite this, I often went to the US and spoke to American audiences giving them some idea of what was happening in China.
WA: What about the Russians?
HS: We all know the history of Sino-Soviet relations. There were ups and downs. Though the Chinese considered the USSR to be their ally, they had no illusions about Russia. In fact, already before the 1949 Revolution the Chinese had come to the conclusion that the Russians wouldn’t be much of a help in the development of China, because they would be busy with their own reconstruction after World War II. So China kept its options open vis-á-vis the Americans. The Chinese leaders had begun to advocate — already at that time — the establishment of a mixed economy and the opening up of China to the outside world. The opening up of China has been attributed to Deng Xiaoping, but don’t forget Zhou and Mao were already thinking and talking about it even before the revolution. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sino-Russian relations have improved considerably. The border problem with the Russians in being resolved, and many countries of Central Asia that were a part of the Soviet Union have resolved their border problem with China. Border agreements were concluded in 1997 with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. So China has developed good relations, not only with Moscow, but also with the former Soviet territories which have become independent.
WA: What about India?
HS: Zhou had very warm feelings for India. The border crisis was unfortunate. Frankly, the Chinese did not instigate the border conflict: it was Nehru who took the first step. Remember his famous remark that he had instructed the Indian armed forces to throw the Chinese out from what India claimed was Indian territory. Anyway, the border conflict was not a major war; it was only a border scuffle — a scuffle in which only a few people died. Of course, it is a sad episode in Sino-Indian relations. When I went to see Nehru in April 1963 I told him, ‘Zhou holds you in high esteem,’ to which Nehru answered, ‘Thank You.’ The rest of our meeting consisted of trivialities. When I later met Zhou in Beijing and told him of Nehru’s illness, and of the ambiguousness in his speech, Zhou was scathing. He said, ‘He has been saying imprecise things for a long time.’ Nehru also reacted in the same way when he received a friendly message from Zhou, he said, ‘I’ve had enough of Zhou’s friendship.’ So you see, even personal relations had become full of animosity. When you come to that point relations do become difficult.
WA: Do you think that relations are improving between the two countries?
HS: Yes, they are. In fact, from the Indian side, it was Indira Gandhi who decided to improve Sino-Indian relations. I went to see her when she became the prime minister. It became very clear at this meeting that she wanted to move away form a situation of impasse. She had come to the conclusion that it was in India’s interest to seek out China. And, she therefore, took a number of initiatives to normalise Sino-India relations — initiatives that are indeed a landmark. What followed after her was the continuation of what she had inaugurated. But it was she who started the whole process.
WA: What was the nature of Zhou’s relations with Mao Zedong so far as internal affairs were concerned? Did he interact freely with him, or did he simply execute his policies?
HS: In internal affairs, it was Mao who was the real strategist and the real decision-maker. Though Zhou must have interacted with Mao on domestic issues, the broad framework of China’s internal policies was designed by Chairman Mao. There were, of course, periods when some of the other leaders took over the decision-making process, as was the case in the sixties, but Mao always retrieved his power.
WA: There have been three crucial domestic developments after the revolution —the Blooming of the Hundred Flowers in the mid-fifties, the Great Leap Forward in the late fifties and finally the Cultural Revolution in the mid-sixties and early seventies. How do you see Zhou’s role in these events?
HS: Mao was directly involved in these three events. But so was Zhou. Take the Blooming of the Hundred Flowers, Zhou, through this movement, tried to introduce something like Chinese style perestroika. Though Mao and Zhou agreed with the idea behind the Hundred Flowers movement, they differed in their interpretation of the movement. For Zhou, the movement meant freeing the intellectuals from party dogmas and restraints. He was particularly concerned with China’s technological development and thought that the movement should permit unrestrained research that the country badly needed. In fact, as early as 1956 the President of the Academy of Sciences, Zhou Peiyuan told me that Zhou Enlai was very worried about insufficiencies of laboratories. He understood the importance of theoretical and fundamental research. But others did not. Mao, on the other hand, seemed to see the Hundred Flowers movement only as part of a total social mobilisation and remotivation of the people. And it is also possible that he looked forward to a bit of bashing within his own party, where power was increasingly falling from his hands into the hands of the others.
WA: What about the Great Leap Forward?
HS: The Great Leap Forward, launched by Mao, was in fact an internal struggle for power — like the Hundred Flowers movement. Here again, Mao felt that he was being increasingly bypassed and ignored by the others in the party. ‘They acted,’ he remarked, ‘as if I were already dead.’ In effect, the Great Leap Forward was a movement to push China economically with all sorts of adventurous economic experiments, with which many in the party did not agree, including Zhou. In fact, Zhou warned against “haste”, and advised him to go slow. Mao lashed out at Zhou in March 1958. ‘You said this is adventurism... you called it haste, impatience...But so was the Long March, so was our War of Liberation. Did we not dare Chiang Kai-shek and the imperialists when we crossed the Yangste River? Our motto should be: “dare”. Zhou also had a different view from that of Mao regarding the role of the Communist Party. While Mao was becoming suspicious of the Party because it was in other hands, Zhou considered that howsoever cumbersome it may be, the party nonetheless provided some sort of order and coherence to the whole system. In fact, he was of the opinion that it was difficult and dangerous to run the country without the Party, and with the Party disintegrated.
WA: What about the Cultural Revolution?
HS: The Cultural Revolution again was Mao’s idea. Though here, too, there was a struggle of power. Mao once again, in launching this movement, was governed by the idea that there was a danger of China becoming infested with capitalistic ideas, and they had to be stemmed by some mobilisation of the people. So you see, in each one of these movements, there was a shift of power, and the Chairman tried to stem it by launching a campaign to mobilise people to neutralise his opponents.
WA: What was Zhou’s position during the Cultural Revolution?
HS: Zhou was faced with a difficult situation — in fact a very difficult situation. He was caught in the middle of a power struggle between Mao and Liu Shaoqi. Without taking sides in this power struggle, Zhou’s principal preoccupation was to save people from the tumultuous madness that had seized a large segment of the Chinese population. He tried to save whomever he could — people of value: scientists, intellectuals, colleagues. All this Zhou was doing while he was ill. From November 1966 until his death Zhou was on cardiac medicine four times a day, suffering from arrhythmia, shortness of breath and fainting spells. But after each spell, lasting a few minutes to half an hour, he would stand up brushing aside his doctors, and with hands shaking he would say, ‘Now let us go on.’ And in the midst of all this—with unruly crowds getting out of hand, with red guards persecuting people, a harrowing event took place — an event that touched Zhou personally. This was the arrest and the death of Zhou’s and Deng Yingchao’s adopted daughter, Sun Weishi. In 1967, she was asked to produce evidence against Foreign Minister Chen Yi, for whom she interpreted from Russian. She refused. She and her husband were jailed and she died in prison. Zhou did not even know where she was imprisoned. When informed of her death, he asked for an inquest. The reply was, ‘Dealt with as a counter revolutionary, cremated. Ashes not kept.’
WA: What was Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing’s role in this?
HS: Her role was very negative, particularly during the Cultural Revolution. Thanks to her, many intellectuals were persecuted and harassed.
WA: When did Zhou come to know about his terminal illness? Did it affect his capacity to function?
HS: Zhou came to know about his terminal illness in 1972; but it was kept a secret. Many hold Jiang Qing responsible for his death, for due to her constant intervention, he was not given proper treatment. But he worked right up to the end. By the end of November 1975, to give you an idea of his illness, Zhou had six major surgical interventions, eight blood cauteries and one hundred blood transfusions. But despite all this, between June 1974 when he entered the hospital, and December 1975, he received sixty-three heads of state or foreign delegations, held one hundred and sixty-one meetings and managed to get out of the hospital twenty times.
WA: After his and Mao’s death, there were considerable popular and spontaneous reactions in favour of Zhou. How do you explain this phenomenon?
HS: Indeed, there were many spontaneous manifestations in Zhou’s favour. For many he represented a sense of moderation, and of keeping things under control. Mao had a high regard for Zhou. In fact he was reported to have said, ‘They respect me but they love him.’ Mao did not go to Zhou’s funeral simply because he never went to funerals, but, like millions of Chinese, he cried at his death.
WA: Did Zhou have a personal life or was he totally dedicated to China?
HS: Yes, he had a personal life — a rich personal life. His wife, Deng Yingchao, was the only woman in his life. They married at a very young age but did not have any children. I was always very happy when I saw them together. They were an ideal couple. When Zhou was in France he had a long and continuous correspondence with her.
WA: When was the last time you saw him?
HS: In 1975, when he gave his famous speech on the four modernisations. He was already sick. I wrote to him, but he did not reply. I was aware he could not, considering his illness.
WA: What, in your view, is the legacy Zhou has left for which he will be remembered?
HS: First of all, he will be remembered for having put China on the map of the world. His travels, his diplomacy and his meetings with his counterparts made the international community aware of China. He will also be remembered for the element of moderation that he always attempted to inject in Chinese politics whenever some of the leaders were tempted by some form of extremism. Zhou will also be remembered for all that he did to protect people from extremists, particularly for the protection he gave and the encouragement he proffered to the scientific world, which made it possible for China to become a nuclear power. I have often asked myself the question whether China would have been able to become a nuclear power if Zhou had not protected the scientific world from radicals, and given them facilities to continue their work. But above all, he will be remembered by the Chinese for the affection he showed and the love he gave to them — perhaps more than the others.