Chen Jian is a professor of history at New York University. His 2024 book, “Zhou Enlai: A Life,” is the first comprehensive biography of the powerful Chinese statesman. He is known as an expert in modern Chinese history and the history of Chinese-American relations.
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Vittal Sivakumar: First off, tell us a bit about what led you to write about Zhou Enlai. What in your career led to that decision?
Chen Jian: First, Zhou Enlai was an extremely important figure and a giant of the twentieth century— a statesman and a diplomatic giant. For more than half a century, he was a central figure in the Chinese Communist Revolution and in the Chinese Communist Party. Beginning in the mid-1920s, he served on the Politburo and later on the Politburo Standing Committee. After 1949, he served consecutively for 27 years as Premier of the People’s Republic of China and for 10 years as Foreign Minister.
Internationally, he became the PRC’s diplomatic face and played a key role in major events such as the Geneva Conference of 1954 and the Bandung Conference of 1955. He also contributed significantly to the rapprochement between China and the United States.
However, there had been no major Zhou Enlai biography before this one. In 2004, Melvin Leffler, a diplomatic historian, was editing a series on great statesmen of the 20th century. He invited me to write a brief biography of Zhou Enlai. To convince me, he said, “Chen Jian, you already published two major books. With your knowledge of Chinese foreign policy and Zhou Enlai, it would probably only take six weeks to complete the book.” Of course, this was wrong, and it took much longer.
Finally, the project changed from a brief book to a major series because the publisher, Potomac Books, went bankrupt, so the original plan did not work out. Ultimately, it took 20 years to write the book rather than six weeks.
Another reason was the timing. In 2004, when I was commissioned to write a biography of Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Foreign Ministry archives began to open. This opening lasted for about ten years. Then there was a system upgrade in 2014, and after the upgrade, all documents that were previously accessible could no longer be accessed.
Sam Sanders: In your book, you mentioned that different generations of Chinese civilians and people outside China tend to view him differently. I’ve seen that in my own family. My grandparents’ generation viewed him as a hero who tempered Mao’s excesses during the Cultural Revolution. My mother’s generation admires him as the diplomat who helped open China and made it possible for people like her to come to America.
But you mention in your book that younger Chinese people today tend to view him more critically, especially since new sources have shed light on what he was able to do and how he acted. Do you see this shift as part of a broader historical trend, perhaps a move into revisionist history or even a post-revisionist era? Do you see your biography fitting that middle ground of trying to synthesize the two strands?
Chen Jian: Let me put it this way. Even in China today, Zhou Enlai is generally regarded in a very positive light—not just in official discourse but also among everyday people. When Zhou Enlai died, people in Beijing poured into the streets to say farewell to him. There was overwhelming praise, admiration, and international acclaim. People regarded him not just as a giant, but also as a good person.
But times have changed. Among younger generations, fewer people know Zhou Enlai’s name. I remember once giving a talk about Zhou Enlai after the publication of my book. A Chinese student from Shanghai who had attended high school there came to see a colleague of mine after attending the lecture, and asked, “Professor, who is Zhou Enlai?”
This change is largely due to the declassification of Chinese archives, memoirs, and other new sources that revealed previously inaccessible information, including the darker aspects of the Chinese Communist Revolution. Events like the Great Leap Forward, the Great Famine, and the Cultural Revolution became better known. Since Zhou Enlai was a main figure in the Chinese Communist Revolution, people began to regard him more critically.
This trend became especially pronounced after 2003, when a highly influential Chinese book, “Zhou Enlai: His Later Years,” was published in Hong Kong. It was banned in mainland China. The author was the son-in-law of Zhou’s interpreter and had been the head of the Zhou Enlai biography research at the Central Documentary Research Institute of the Chinese Communist Party. In that book, he described Zhou’s performance during the Cultural Revolution in a very negative, critical light.
As a result, Zhou’s previously entirely positive image had been overturned. This shift has less to do with historical trends like revisionism and more to do with the critical reassessment of China’s recent past, especially the history of the Chinese Communist Revolution.
Sivakumar: Your biography is the first complete English-language biography of Zhou Enlai. There have been others who have covered aspects of his life, and over the past couple of decades, there have also been English-language biographies published of other famous Chinese figures. Ezra Vogel, for example, published a highly acclaimed biography of Deng Xiaoping. How have those works influenced your biography?
Chen Jian: I learned from them, certainly, and I respect Vogel highly as a biographer.
We talked about the Zhou Enlai biography, and I think there are two things that stood out to me. First, I believed that this biography needed solid documentary support. As I mentioned, there were other Zhou Enlai biographies published years ago. Dick Wilson, a journalist, published a biography of Zhou Enlai, but it lacked archival support. Another famous author, Han Suyin, wrote a biography of Zhou Enlai titled “Eldest Son,” largely based on interviews with people close to Zhou. Interviews are valuable, too, but the problem with interviews alone is that they’re oftentimes self-serving. You often find that interviewees can be influenced by very specific, subjective feelings, so it’s important to cross-check interview information against documentary sources.
Secondly, as I write in this book, to understand Zhou Enlai, you must also understand China’s Communist Revolution. Why did it happen? Where and how did it go wrong? I personally experienced both the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution. As a dissident student, I was put in jail twice as a teenager. So the question naturally arises: how could all this happen?
Some people try to completely negate revolution, especially the Chinese Communist Revolution, labeling it as a radical leftist, transformative revolution. In my view, revolution itself is not a sin. I use the word sin, not crime. A revolution may involve crimes, but revolution itself arises because the previous regime created conditions that made it inevitable.
Revolutions have a transformative meaning: they attempt to transform human nature and bring about universal justice and equality. These goals are admirable. But when utopian visions are turned into policies, revolutions can go very wrong. When revolutions succeed, revolutionaries come to power. With power, especially unchecked power, corruption is at its most extreme. This is what happened in China. In that sense, Zhou and his comrades, including Mao, made the revolution, but they were also remade by the revolution. So I wanted the book to tell Zhou Enlai’s story and also explore the larger meaning.
There are other important aspects, relevant particularly today. First, he was a revolutionary who tried to maintain a centrist position while others pushed politics to extremes. Today, we see politics polarized everywhere with no space for compromise. Second, Zhou was someone who tried to get things done. That was one of Zhou Enlai’s greatest achievements— the quality of his statesmanship, that even when the revolution was underway, destructive and mobilized by all kinds of labels, slogans, shouting, he prioritized maintaining equality and the quality of people’s everyday life. Political correctness alone does not justify policies and actions. Leaders must present workable plans. In that regard, Zhou Enlai has given us a good reference.
Sanders: It sounds like Zhou Enlai was a figure who could bridge the center of political authority in Beijing and translate its policies into on-the-ground action. It reminds me of the quote, “The mountains are high and the Emperor is far away.” In an age when technology shortens distances, many Chinese policies are becoming stricter in their crackdown on corruption and in imposing greater state reach into local bureaucracies. What role is there going forward for someone like Zhou? Can there be an intermediary figure, someone who can interpret policies and put them in place?
Chen Jian: You do need such figures. That’s why Zhou Enlai’s story is still so meaningful.
He was not a person who simply carried out tasks. He was also a visionary. In China today, surveillance cameras are everywhere. There was a jewelry store robbery in Shanghai a few days ago, and the suspect was caught within an hour because cameras were everywhere. Street robbery has gone down to nearly zero.
Still, you find corruption. Recently, nine three-star generals in China were disciplined for bribery and other crimes. This shows that systems, institutions, regulations, and laws are critical for checking and balancing power.
China has discussed adopting a “Sunshine Law,” which requires all public servants to disclose their property. It was first proposed in 1988 and repeatedly raised at the National People’s Congress until 2008, but it was never passed. Simply punishing corruption will not be sufficient to wipe out the roots. That’s why China still needs to deepen these reforms. Opening up will require developing institutions, codes, laws, and regulations to check and balance power, preventing the emergence of unchecked, unbalanced, supreme power from persisting.
Sivakumar: I’m interested in Zhou Enlai’s time abroad. He spent time in Europe and Japan, and you yourself have spent much of your career abroad studying China. How have your experiences as part of the Chinese diaspora informed your understanding of Zhou Enlai’s time overseas?
Chen Jian: This is an absolutely great question.
For Zhou Enlai, it’s clear that his experiences in Japan and Europe influenced him. He did not formally study in Europe. He quickly became a journalist and then a professional revolutionary, working in Germany, France, and for a short time in London. It opened his intellectual horizons and allowed him to see the larger world. That was the time, right after the First World War, when all kinds of ideological thoughts were spreading in different parts of the world. Zhou Enlai was deeply aware of China’s backwardness and weakness after years of Western and Japanese Imperialism. His dream was to see China rise again. Through his experiences abroad, he was exposed to a range of ideologies: anarchism, pragmatism, liberalism, socialism, social divinism, and communism.
In his diary and a lot of his correspondence, you can see him comparing the ideologies. Eventually, he concluded that the so-called “Russian past” — the Bolshevik Revolution — offered the most rapid way of changing China’s international status. In one of his letters from early 1922, he wrote that he had chosen communism and that his belief would not change.
In my own case, studying and living in the United States was also eye-opening. It’s not just in terms of access to new opportunities and access to books; it’s a different cultural and global vision that you cannot obtain just by staying in China. In China and in other East Asian countries, there is a strong examination culture that teaches students to find the single correct answer. In the United States, education emphasizes critical thinking and trying to test the wrong answers and then come up with your own correct answers. I think this is extremely important. So in my own case, I think being overseas has changed my academic perspective and my outlook as a human being.
Sanders: Looking at Zhou Enlai’s early life and when he’s developing his leadership style, it seems like he rose to a high position for the CCP relatively early. Do you think his leadership style and personal qualities were developed from a multitude of experiences, or do you think there was one major turning point that shaped his worldview?
Chen Jian: Early life matters. Zhou Enlai received a classical Chinese education. He then studied at the Nanhai School, a pioneer in China’s modern educational system. Then he went to study abroad. All of these experiences have combined to shape him.
He was also raised by three women: his birth mother, his adoptive mother, and a nanny, which influenced his personality and temperament, thereby encouraging him to ambitiously pursue equality across China. However, as a youth, he lacked the kind of revolutionary ambition we see in others. Some people even called him gay because in his diary, he discussed a very unique perspective on marriage and his love interests. There is no direct evidence to confirm that he was gay. The decisive turning point in his personality was between 1921 and 1922. When he arrived in Europe, he was still comparing different ideologies. By 1922, he had committed himself to communism. At that time, he was writing for the Chinese newspaper Ye Shi Bao and reporting on the British miners’ strikes and European social conditions after the First World War. Meanwhile, China’s national crisis was deepening after the Paris Peace Conference.
All of these experiences convinced him that communism offered the best path forward for China’s transformation.
Sivakumar: There have been evolving interpretations of Zhou’s relationship with Mao. How have you grown to understand that in the course of writing this book?
Chen Jian: This is perhaps the most difficult question.
A number of critics describe Zhou Enlai as Mao’s assistant or accomplice, arguing that without Zhou, Mao could not have implemented many of the disastrous policies. This is not untrue.
However, Zhou’s role in helping Mao was far more complicated. When Mao entered the political arena, China was divided, weak, and plagued by warlordism, poverty, and illiteracy. When Mao died in 1976, China had become unified — except for China’s claim over Taiwan — and recognized as a major world power. Chinese people’s living standards and education have greatly improved. China’s production, despite the setbacks from the Great Leap Forward, had really advanced. Women’s social status had been greatly improved. At the same time, the suffering of the Chinese people was the price to pay for those achievements. Without Zhou Enlai, many achievements might not have been realized, because Zhou was the person who implemented policies and kept the government functioning.
On the other hand, Zhou also limited the damage caused by Mao’s radical policies. So when people ask me, “Is Zhou a good guy or a bad guy?” Yes and no. All great historical figures contain both elements.
Sanders: Having studied and lived in the US and China for a long time now, what course of evolution do you see US-China relations taking, and what would Zhou have thought about the path forward?
Chen Jian: It’s a difficult question to answer because even in recent years, Chinese-American relations have shifted rapidly. Still, I’m cautiously optimistic. The reasons are quite simple. Both countries are big, and their biggest challenges are internal rather than external. Sometimes leaders emphasize external threats because it is easier to scapegoat than to address domestic problems. Both countries are nuclear powers with enormous capacity to undermine the other party. Historically, the American GPS was destroyed by the Chinese, and the United States retaliated by taking out its satellite system. You know, we have now brought warfare into our space. So, in other words, a confrontation would impose enormous costs on both sides, far exceeding the superficial victory either side could win.
The question is how the two countries can reach some level of mutual understanding and compromise. Even within the United States, compromise between the political parties has become difficult, even though the American Constitution is built on compromise.
I believe the risk of direct military confrontation between China and the United States remains low. Ultimately, people should understand that to address the main source of their challenges, they should pursue compromise. Even during the Cold War, Chinese and American leaders sought to avoid a direct, all-out confrontation. That restraint should remain the top priority. The second priority for the government is to prioritize people’s everyday lives. If both countries avoid full confrontation and prioritize practical improvements to people’s lives, relations can remain stable. That’s why I’m cautiously optimistic.
Sanders: Thank you, Professor.
Featured/Headline Image Chen Jian, Image sourced from Wikimedia Commons | CC License, no changes made