Zhou Enlai

Zhou Enlai (March 5, 1898 – January 8, 1976), a prominent Chinese Communist leader, was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, from 1949 until his death.

All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.

Sourced

• All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.
  • Saturday Evening Post (March 27, 1954)
  • A play upon the famous maxim of Clausewitz: "War is the continuation of politics by other means."

• China is an attractive piece of meat coveted by all … but very tough, and for years no one has been able to bite into it.
  • To Chinese Communist Party Congress, New York Times (September 1, 1973)

• At Bandung, Zhou Enlai concluded his summary of his government’s approach to boundary settlement with a pledge and a warning: “We shall use only peaceful means and we shall not permit any other kind of method.”.

• "It is too soon to say." Often, though disputedly, thought to refer to the significance of the French Revolution of 1789.

Unsourced

• China and North Vietnam are closely united to each other, like the lips and the teeth.
  • In Hanoi (March 5, 1971)

• For us, it is all right if the talks succeed, and it is all right if they fail.
  • On President Richard Nixon’s visit to China (October 5, 1971)

• Nikita Khrushchev: The difference between the Soviet Union and China is that I rose to power from the peasant class, whereas you came from the privileged Mandarin class.
  Zhou: True. But there is this similarity. Each of us is a traitor to his class.

Quotes about Zhou

• It is a little bit humiliating when I have to say that Chou En-lai to me appears as the most superior brain I have so far met in the field of foreign politics... so much more dangerous than you imagine because he is so much better a man than you have ever admitted.
  • Dag Hammarskjöld, in a letter to a friend, as quoted in Hammarskjöld (1972) by Brian Urquhart

• Mao dominated any gathering; Zhou suffused it. Mao's passion strove to overwhelm opposition; Zhou's intellect would seek to persuade or outmaneuver it. Mao was sardonic; Zhou penetrating. Mao thought of himself as a philosopher; Zhou saw his role as an administrator or a negotiator. Mao was eager to accelerate history; Zhou was content to exploit its currents.
  • Henry Kissinger, "On China" Penguin Press,(2011)