Zhou Enlai, or Chou En-lai, (born March 5, 1898, Huai’an, Jiangsu province, China—died Jan. 8, 1976, Beijing), Chinese communist leader, premier from the founding of the People’s Republic of China until his death (1949–76). Zhou became a communist during his studies abroad in France and was an organizer for the Chinese Communist Party in Europe. Like other communists, he worked with the Nationalists in the early 1920s and escaped capture when Chiang Kai-shek purged his former allies in 1927. He joined Zhu De and Mao Zedong in Jiangxi province and became political commissar of the Red Army. In the 1930s he negotiated a tactical alliance with the Nationalists to resist Japanese aggression. When the communists prevailed over the Nationalists in 1949, Zhou became premier of the new People’s Republic of China. During the Cultural Revolution, Zhou helped restrain extremists; as the revolution waned in the early 1970s, he sought to restore Deng Xiaoping and other moderates to power. He is credited with arranging the historic meeting between U.S. Pres. Richard Nixon and Mao that paved the way for U.S. recognition of the communist government.
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