Zhou Enlai

Zhou Enlai is a pivotal figure in the transition described between Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and the post-Mao struggle over China’s direction. He persuaded Mao to appoint Deng Xiaoping first vice-premier in 1974; after Zhou’s death, a spontaneous commemoration in Tiananmen Square became a protest, and Deng was purged again. The sequence places Zhou at the hinge between Deng’s temporary return and the political crisis that preceded Mao’s death.

Return of Deng Xiaoping

After being labeled the number-two capitalist roader, Deng was jailed in 1967 and sent into exile in Jiangxi province in 1969, where he worked in a rural tractor factory. He was rehabilitated in 1974. At a time when Mao’s health was deteriorating and leftists were gaining power, Zhou persuaded Mao to make Deng first vice-premier.

Deng’s return opened a short period in which a different policy direction could be articulated. In 1975, he supervised three party documents calling for revitalized higher education, renewed material incentives in industry and agriculture, and the removal of leftists from the party. Zhou’s intervention therefore preceded Deng’s attempt to redirect policy, though the account does not suggest that the documents were adopted.

Mourning and Protest

After Zhou’s death, a spontaneous celebration of his life in Tiananmen Square on April 5 became a protest against the government. The public gathering thus acquired a political significance beyond commemoration. The Gang of Four blamed Deng for the demonstrations, and he was stripped of his positions and dismissed once more. Rather than removing the leftists he opposed, Deng found that they had removed him.

The episode marks the narrowing of the political space that Zhou’s appointment of Deng had briefly helped reopen. Zhou is not presented as a narrator or as the focus of a sustained personal portrait; his importance is conveyed through the consequences attached to his intervention and to the public response after his death.

The Succession Struggle

After Zhou’s death, Mao appointed Hua Guofeng acting premier instead of Deng. In the relative power vacuum of 1976, Hua accumulated considerable personal power. Mao’s death in September then created a more decisive opening: the party had been dominated by Mao, and both the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution had largely been his initiatives.

The resulting contest involved competing visions of change. The Gang of Four intended to continue Cultural Revolution policies as a way to consolidate their power and that of the Communist Party. Hua wanted to abandon the Cultural Revolution but could not distance himself fully from it, since his own rise depended on its effects. He instead advocated a more balanced version of Mao’s vision, later expressed in the Two Whatevers. Zhou’s death therefore stands within a chain of events in which mourning became protest, protest brought Deng’s second dismissal, and the later death of Mao left the succession unresolved.