Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China, 1898-1976

by Han Suyin

Zhou Enlai was one of the greatest statesmen of the twentieth century. Long overshadowed by the more visible - and charismatic - Mao Dzedong, he and his life and extraordinary accomplishments remain little recognized outside China, where he is still revered as the beloved father of the modern nation. In Eldest Son, Han Suyin brings this towering figure to life in a profoundly human and intimate portrait - the first full-scale biography of the late premier to be published in English.
Between 1956 and 1974, Dr. Han conducted a series of eleven unprecedented interviews with Zhou, each of them lasting for several hours. Drawing upon these encounters, and on further meetings with his widow, his family and colleagues, as well as her unusual access to the Communist Party archives, Dr. Han presents a nuanced portrait of this deeply committed Chinese nationalist and Communist. Here is the full sweep of Zhou's remarkable his early schooling in Japan and Europe, his complex and loyal relationship to Mao, his historic meetings with other world leaders such as Khrushchev, Nehru, and Nixon which opened China to the global community. And Dr. Han gives us the private man as well as the public his loving and formative marriage to Deng Yingchao, the murder of his adopted daughter at the hands of the Red Guards, and ultimately his painful battle with cancer.
Like no other, Zhou's life is the history of modern China. Through the lens of his experience we see unfolding the dramatic, sometimes violent, decades of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, the galvanizing Long March, the social convulsions of the Great Leap Forward, the violent excesses of the Cultural Revolution, and the diplomatic rapprochement with the West in the 1970s. Dr. Han weaves these decisive events with the impressions and memories of hundreds of ordinary citizens from every sector of Chinese society to create a rich historical tapestry.
Compellingly written, unique in its perspective, Eldest Son is masterful social history and an indispensable portrait of a legendary leader whose political legacy continues to influence the course of China today.

Genres: China, History, Biography, Asia, Nonfiction

483 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Han Suyin (Pinyin: Hán Sùyīn) is the pen name of Elizabeth Comber, born Rosalie Elisabeth Kuanghu Chow (Pinyin: Zhōu Guānghú). She was a Chinese-born Eurasian author of several books on modern China, novels set in East Asia, and autobiographical works, as well as a physician. She wrote in English and French. She died in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2012.

Reviews

[Hatuxka · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few days ago, Jeff J. Brown as he commemorated Zhou Enlai on his Vlog said that all biographies of Zhou are essentially trash. This made me want to look at this book again to see if I overlooked that it was actually historical dreck. There are three key areas to help determine this: how the author depicts the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and Zhou Enlai's interactions with Mao Zhedong (but there is so much more in this book!). I’ll try to relate the first two briefly. Han Suyin was not an historical analyst, but began as a novelist. Her biography of Zhou is a narrative of a personal timeline of Zhou. It is densely detailed with a tremendous capacity to relate events tributary to the timeline. You are trecking through a blizzard of names, with a huge backdrop of the actions of world leaders at the time. Archives, publications, interviews and oral history and 11 face-to-face meetings with Zhou are the chief sources. There are biographical notes, and a very detailed index, most helpful when rereading the book or using it as a reference to the vast panorama of history it encompasses.

to add: The actions which Deng Xiaoping is credited with, a mixed economy as a needed step on an extended pathway of the revolution, the opening of China, were actually based on concepts forged by Mao and Zhou Enlai and expressed to the US Dixie Mission in Yenan in 1944. Further, members of the mission later tried to say they considered Mao and Zhou telling them that they were chiefly agricultural reformers as "guff". These assertions were dismissed by the US but they proved true. The the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were heavily concerned with agricultural and rural reform. From that time, everything China says is considered a lie by the US establishment unless they have a selfish motive for making an exception to that pattern.

The Great Leap is not covered in a contiguous block probably because of the constant focus on the public and personal life of Zhou. Among reciting anecdotes that fit the patterns of how western sources have highlighted human errors in the Leap is passing mention of some meaningful and enduring accomplishments of the Leap Forward: The full institution of collectivization (communes) and through them the very communist mass mobilization of the rural populations to revamp and extend water management and irrigation systems to cover more arable land. This in turn formed a basis of agricultural rationalization an immediate outgrowth of which (even before widespread mechanization was accomplished) was more intensive agricultural production management which then resulted in stabilization and improved the quality of rural life resulting in self-supporting school systems, chemical and fertilizer production and rural healthcare. The author probably didn't know or hear in her circles of the causes of the severe food shortages that are attributed to the Great Leap Forward: bad weather and pest infestations. This is confirmed in the study by Dongping Han (The Unknown Cultural Revolution) who notes three straight years of floods and droughts from 1959-61. Neither Han Suyin nor Dongping Han use the word “famine”.

The Cultural Revolution is described dispassionately, but it’s onset is forshadowed by the author’s description of what Zhou noted in his travels in around the country around the beginning of the Great Leap: evidence of a yawning disconnect between a comfortable and complacent young urban population and the hardscrabble to brutal life in the countryside. But the author doesn’t refer back to this in describing a chaotic Cultural Revolution despite the initiation of this period being based on Mao Zhedong’s similar but even earlier finding that there was a dangerously increasing centralized, bureaucratic and ossified party cadre combined with what would now be called a cultural divide between urban and rural and clearly a “generation gap”. Dongping Han provides an indication that to me means Mao might have stolen this take on the disparities in the quality of life of rural and urban populations from comments made in 1953 by a conservative social reformer, Liang Schuming. Mao singled Liang out for harsh criticism as a result. The varieties and magnitude of the excesses are the backdrop for the many twists and turns Zhou was forced into to keep the country together, falling as it sometimes did into the zealous clutches of Jiang Qing of the “Gang of Four” and estranged wife of Mao Dzedong. Obituaries of Han Suyin would typically refer to her unbending refusal to condemn the Cultural Revolution in her books. Her biography of Mao covering 1949-75 might be different, but in this biography she frames it in terms of a calamity that Zhou is left to deal with alone. So, as with the Great Leap Forward, any analysis of the Cultural Revolution’s ultimate effects is preempted by a tight focus Zhou and the politics at the top. The strength of her depiction of the Cultural Revolution is precise understanding of the choices Zhou was left with in dealing with the plottings of Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao, and to both acknowledge and attempt to moderate the ineluctable changes the Cultural Revolution produced such as the greater allocation of rural output to rural populations (made possible by the unheralded [by Han Suyin for one] change the Great Leap Forward brought). Central planning might have been more diminished than it was without Zhou interceding, for example. For a country fighting for strategic security (by aiding a costly war against Imperialism in Vietnam) with none but conventional deterrence this was survival.

This is a great book because of the breadth and very often the depth of coverage of the people and events that Zhou influenced or was affected by in his leadership with Mao in ensuring successes in the pathway of China’s achievement of domestic economic progress and global influence.

[Hani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the most underrated person of influence in the development of China and their diplomacy. The great book is written with amazing detail not only about Zhou Enlai but also about life and culture in China.

[Dominggus Oktavianus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in Indonesian version that titled "Zhou Enlai, Potret Intelektual Revolusioner", published by Hasta Mitra. Very good writing by Han Suyin. It's recommended for every progressive activist.

[Talmadge Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very detailed biography, though not as nuanced in its viewpoint as the Gao Wenqian biography of Zhou Enlai. Good portrayal of interactions between Chinese & Soviet leaders of the time (especially between Zhou Enlai & Khrushchev), but at times the book comes across as gossipy. The author also wrote "A Many Splendored Thing," upon which the 1955 William Holden film was based.

[Maeda Yoppy · Rating 4 out of 5]

dibalik kejayaan china, ada sosok besar bernama Zhou en lai...