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Zhou Enlai: Mean Or Nice?

By Dan Harris on Posted in Good People

When my daughters were four or five years old, I would love to mention someone they knew and then ask, “mean or nice?” I would give them maybe 2-3 seconds to answer and I would then blurt out another name. They would outgrow the game (and prove themselves too nuanced to run for political office) once they started to hedge by trying to explain how someone was sometimes mean and sometimes nice.
With apologies to Jeremiah over at the Granite Studio, who somehow manages to find subtlety in Chinese history, and with a thumbing of my nose to those who will write in and accuse me of being simplistic (duh!), here goes the Chinese history version.
Zhou Enlai, mean or nice?

  • Kirby P

    This post is both ridiculous AND simplistic.
    NICE.

  • http://www.zhongnanhaiblog.com Paul

    It’s not an easy question to answer. Would I have liked to split a bottle of Maotai with him and get his thoughts on life, sure. From all indications he was a pretty decent guy. So, in that respect, NICE. But on the other hand, he stood by while thousands upon thousands were persecuted, and did nothing to stop Mao from travellling down destructive paths like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. So, in that respect, MEAN. Ah, to be a philospher must be hell!!
    @Kirby P: Sometimes the most simple questions require the most thought.

  • Franklin

    Dan, this sort of thing is beneath you. MEAN!

  • Bill

    Mostly mean. He should have at least tried to influence Mao to reduce the intensity or the duration of the Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward, Communes, The Anti-right, The 3 Anti and 5 Anti. He killed too many innocent people before 1949 as the spy master of CPC. Whole families were executed, including babies and servants, just to show how ruthless he was.

  • other lisa

    Nice. But mean. But nice.

  • Kimberly Frascarelli

    Simplicity is an art form. I nicely mean it. People usually overcomplicate things when they don’t really know what they want to say, or they want to avoid the potential conflict of saying what they mean. Zhou Enlai: Mean.

  • sholot

    I found most people commenting on Mao or Zhou only according to the years after 1949, or even during culture revolution. Did anyone ever study them beyond this period? Mean or Nice? Looking through their whole life, I would not judge too quickly. Anyway, it is still too early to tell about French revolution according to Zhou (or Mao?) after 200+years. So why so hurry about Mao or Zhou now?

  • Pffefer

    Find me one guy who is or was absolutely nice.
    John McCain? Yeah right!

  • http://www.chinalawblog.com China Law Blog

    Kirby P.,
    And your point….

  • http://www.chinalawblog.com China Law Blog

    Paul,
    That’s a no decision.

  • http://www.chinalawblog.com China Law Blog

    Franklin,
    That’s the spirit.

  • http://www.chinalawblog.com China Law Blog

    Bill,
    “Mostly mean.” I’ll take that as a mean.

  • http://www.chinalawblog.com China Law Blog

    Other Lisa (but THE Lisa to me),
    Come on….

  • http://www.chinalawblog.com China Law Blog

    Kimberly,
    Bravo.

  • http://www.chinalawblog.com China Law Blog

    sholot,
    That’s a lawyer answer. If things change, you can always say you were mistaken.

  • http://www.chinalawblog.com China Law Blog

    Pffefer,
    My mom.

  • http://www.foarp.blogspot.com FOARP

    Just ask yourself whether you would have made the decisions that he made, no flim-flamming about ‘I don’t know what it was like to live at that time’. A simple yes or no – would you have signed death sentences for men you knew to be innocent of the crimes they were accused of to no purpose other than the mad designs of history’s most bloody dictator?
    If no then what are we arguing about?
    Meanwhile, suppose Hermann Goering, fighter ace and mid-century Prussian chivalry personified, had been killed on instructions of Adolf Hitler – after attempting to nullify the worst that Hitler did to Germany (as, according to Albert Speer, he actually did) – would people be going around and making his excuses for him? Does anyone try to argue that even Speer, the man who did the most to save Germany from Hitler’s excesses, was a good man?
    Before this turns into some great judgement on the Chinese government, I will of course say that 60′s/70′s politics has little in the way of similarity to the current situation in China, but the past lends legitimacy to the current regime.

  • http://www.ctsi-global.com Robert Berry

    Mean as a cottonmouth snake.

  • jms

    I don’t know whether Zhou was mean or nice. Didn’t live through that era. Haven’t read enough about Chinese politics prior to the 1980s to make a judgment. Even if I had read, I don’t know how much of it I should trust –it seems Chinese politics is dominated by rumors and anecdotal tales. Who knows, maybe Zhou was mean and should’ve done more to stop Mao’s madness, but maybe Mao manipulated Zhou and gave him false information and Zhou was clueless, who knows. None of us was there in Zhongnanhai with Mao and Zhou. A lot of times, things are not what they appear to be…

  • Laurentius Metaal

    A man who must have been subjected to a lot of stress. I know he did manage to help people during the cultural revolution, e.g. changed family names to save them from being bullied, got people in the regular army where they were safe from mad students. However he probably was no saint being able to survive at Mao’s court with several groups doing everything to gain power. He fought a long battle against the Japanese and Nationalists which must have hardened him. A difficult life full of hard decisions with very little room for error. When he was sick he kept on going to the last, affraid of what would happen to the country after his demise. He was loved by the Chinese people, the West and developing nations held him in high esteem.

  • http://badbadchina.blogspot.com nanheyangrouchuan

    Anyone who worked for Mao had to show their ruthlessness to be portrayed as loyal. Zhou was an intellectual and politician, Mao was a bumpkin warlord and had already demonstrated his method of rule when he gave other warlords he defeated the option to “join me or die” and Deng and Zhou were in the same situation. Of course, all Chinese rulers have followed the pattern of exterminating a small number of resistors as a demonstration to the rest that they’d better behave.

  • Handan

    Maybe Zhou did all the mean things to keep himself in a position that maximizes the number of nice things he could still do. Imagine a Cultural Revolution with Zhou himself persecuted early on.
    Mean or nice, I trust Zhou to be smart enough to know what to do and what not to do to avoid Mao’s suspicion, which Zhou achieved with masterly tactics to the benefit of generations of Chinese people.
    Sorry I can’t go with either mean or nice. I’d rather say Zhou is a conscientious man who made many hard decisions.

  • http://www.foarp.blogspot.com FOARP

    @Handan – And what about the people who actually tried to challenge Mao? Why is it that Zhou Enlai is so much better remembered than Peng Dehuai? Or Liu Shaoqi? Or even Lin Biao? All of them were communists who tried in their own way to stop Mao’s disasterous plans, rather than simply moderate them in the way that Zhou Enlai did.
    It has to be said also that there is little or no real proof of Zhou Enlai’s suposededly ‘masterly’ handling of Mao. You can see him trying to protect certain individuals and trying to prevent the destruction of a handful of national monuments by red guards, but beyond this all you can see is the calculation of a cold-blooded killer.

  • http://www.chinalawblog.com/2008/03/mao_zedong_mean_or_nice.html China Law Blog

    Mao Zedong: Mean Or Nice?

    Our last poll was such a success, I am running another one, even more sophisticated this time. The official Chinese government position is that he was right 70% of the time and wrong the other 30%. Please vote AND please comment. Opinion Polls &am…

  • http://huoleifeng.blogspot.com b. cheng

    This is an extremely difficult question. On the one hand, he did his best to save many leaders and cultural sites, he helped to dilute the rabidness of the CR, but at the same time, his complicity in it probably let it go on for longer than it should have. As sholot points out, when dealing with this question, the focus is only on that 10 year period, are the sins during that time enough to destroy his reputation throughout his long life? I say nice mostly, and then somewhat mean from ’65 or so on…

  • otherlisa

    Okay. Nice.

  • Handan

    FOARP, what you’re saying is proof that Mao was unstoppable. As much as I admire the courage and integrity shown in the fight put up by Peng Dehuai, Zhu De and the like, I also appreciate Zhou’s compromise.
    That big compromise, for all I can tell, was made for the possiblity of protecting what few people he still can, not for his own craving for power, and with great courage as well. Zhou wasn’t stupid. He probably knew that all the mean thing he had to do would make him the subject of much contention, like what we are seeing right here. He still did it. He had to.

  • http://www.foarp.blogspot.com FOARP

    @Handan – Men are only unstoppable where no-one acts to stop them.

  • chp008

    Nice,absolutely.I also judge a people by what he has done.What he got in the past, what he lost in the past. In the revolution, He devoted himself to create the new China. In the Culture Revolution, He lost his life. He gained nothing in the Culture Revolution.
    I think you all should pay more time to read history.