Person1898 – 1976
Zhou Enlai
Also called: Chou En-lai
First premier of the People’s Republic of China (1949–1976), long in charge of diplomacy, who arranged Nixon’s 1972 visit
Where they went
7 related events
- 1
In 1924 Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Party adopted the policies of “alliance with the Soviet Union, admission of communists, and support for peasants and workers”, letting Communists join as individuals, and founded the Whampoa Military Academy to prepare to overthrow the warlords.
- 2
On 12 April 1927, in the middle of the Northern Expedition, Chiang Kai-shek violently purged Communists and labour organizations in Shanghai, and on 18 April set up a National Government in Nanjing. The First United Front was broken.
- 3
Driven from its base at Ruijin in Jiangxi by Nationalist encirclement campaigns, the Communist Red Army walked about 12,000 km over a year from October 1934 to northern Shaanxi; along the way Mao Zedong took the leadership.
- 4
On 12 December 1936 Chiang Kai-shek was detained in Xi’an by his own commanders, Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, who pressed him to stop fighting the Communists and turn against Japan. Mediation by the Communist Zhou Enlai won Chiang’s release, paving the way for the Second United Front.
- 5
When the war with Japan broke out, the Nationalists and Communists joined hands again in September 1937 to form an anti-Japanese national united front; the Red Army was reorganized as the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army.
- 6
After Japan’s surrender, full-scale civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists resumed in 1946. Having won over the peasants through land reform, the Communists triumphed in three great campaigns in 1948–1949, and the Nationalist government moved to Taiwan.
- 7
US President Nixon visited Beijing, met Mao Zedong and issued the Shanghai Communiqué. Sino-American rapprochement ushered the Cold War into an era of détente.
People who appear alongside
- Chiang Kai-shek1887 – 1975
Leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party who unified China through the Northern Expedition and led the Nanjing government through the war with Japan; after losing the civil war he moved to Taiwan and ruled the Republic of China there
- Mao Zedong1893 – 1976
Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party who won the civil war and founded the People’s Republic in 1949, and launched the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution
- Sun Yat-sen1866 – 1925
Leader of the Chinese revolution who led the Tongmenghui under the Three Principles of the People and became provisional president of the Republic of China after the Xinhai Revolution
- Zhang Xueliang1901 – 2001
Son of the Fengtian warlord Zhang Zuolin who joined the Nationalist government after Japanese officers killed his father; in the 1936 Xi’an Incident he detained Chiang Kai-shek to demand resistance to Japan
- Richard Nixon1913 – 1994
37th US president (1969–1974) who issued the Nixon Doctrine, visited China and pursued détente, and withdrew US troops from Vietnam; he resigned over Watergate
Themes this person appears in
- Republican China and Imperial Japan1912 – 1949
The age when the Republic of China, born of the 1911 Revolution, passed through warlord division, the May Fourth Movement, the United Front and the Northern Expedition, fought Japan’s invasion and split in civil war — as Japan moved from Taishō democracy through the Manchurian Incident and military coups to the war in China and the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and colonized Korea resisted through the March First Movement and armed struggle
- The Cold War1945 – 1991
From Yalta to the dissolution of the Soviet Union — half a century in which two blocs led by the US and the USSR divided the world