Zhou En Lai: Mao’s Man or His Own?

Zhou (far left) with Mao Zedong (center-left) and Bo Gu (far right) in Yan’an (1935) – Public Domain

An epic life deserves an epic biography, and Chen Jian provides this for Zhou, who was probably the consummate diplomat of the twentieth century. Chen combs the vast literature on the Chinese revolution as well as primary sources in the archives of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to give us a sympathetic but not uncritical portrait of the second most important...