Zhou Enlai, born on this day in 1898, was a communist revolutionary, statesman, and military officer who served as the 1st Premier of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1976. "All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means."

Zhou was educated in a missionary college in Tianjin before studying at a Japanese university. In Tianjin, he met his future wife, Deng Yingchao while participating in a radical political group known as the "Awakening Society". In 1920, Zhou moved to France, where he helped form the overseas branch of the Chinese Communist Party. He also lived in Britain and Germany before returning to China in 1924.

While working in the Political Department of the Whampoa Military Academy, Zhou was also made the secretary of the Communist Party of Guangdong-Guangxi, and served as the CCP representative with the rank of major-general.

After the Chinese Civil War broke out in 1927, Zhou served in the communist forces, helping establish and oversee a network of underground cells of communist resistance. Zhou played a leading role in the Long March of 1934-35, an arduous military retreat of communist forces over 8,000 miles.

Following the Zunyi Conference in 1935, Mao Zedong became Zhou's assistant. After the conclusion of the Long March, Mao officially took over Zhou Enlai's leading position in the CCP, while Zhou took a secondary position as vice-chairman. Both would hold their leadership positions until their deaths in 1976.

Zhou was a prominent participant in the 1955 Asian–African Conference, held in Indonesia. The conference produced a declaration in strongly in favor of peace, the abolition of nuclear arms, general arms reduction, and the principle of universal representation at the United Nations. Zhou was critical of American imperial aggression and stated "the population of Asia will never forget that the first atom bomb was exploded on Asian soil."

Zhou passed away from bladder cancer on January 8th, 1976, just nine months before Mao Zedong's death in September that year.

"Today the first unification of the Chinese people has emerged. The people themselves have become the masters of Chinese soil, and the rule of the reactionaries in China has been irrevocably overthrown."

  • Zhou Enlai, from "Chinese People Will not Tolerate Aggression" (October 1950)

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  • Azarova [they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I've been reading an account of an American doctor that visited the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in the 1920s. While his language is crude and would today be considered queerphobic, he nonetheless has a very positive view of queer people and a rather glowing opinion of the institute and Hirschfeld himself.

    It is my fond belief that those who have been clearing away the debris which during two thousand years has accumulated in and befouled the field of sex will be counted, in time to come, among humanity's real benefactors. And among these benefactors, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, clear-sighted, non-sensational, humane, will occupy a most honored place.

    CW: suicide mention

    And by boldly proclaiming and proving that [queer people] are not removed, not vicious criminals, not even generally inferior to normal people, he has given back their self-respect and has made life bearable to thousands and thousands of unfortunates whose life had been a hell before. And he has saved thousands from a suicide's grave. And he has made the field very dangerous and unprofitable for the dastardly blackmailer, whose particular domain of activity is among [queer people], and who thrives with such peculiar luxuriance in our puritanical country.

    He's also very critical of the US, at least on this front. He talks about his desire to set up a similar institute in the states, but realizes that the US would be viciously hostile to it. Portions of his artice could've been written last week.

    The scope of the Institute is a much wider one, embracing as it does the entire field of sexology. It is an institution of which I dreamed for many years and which I had hoped to establish in the United States but which I felt would not thrive on account of our prudish, hypocritical attitude to all questions of sex. In such an institution one has to have a free hand; the advice given must be unhampered by any fear of violating some medieval law or of colliding with a stupidly childish, and for that reason all the more tyrannical public opinion.

    [...]

    As is well known, our, in many respects blessed, country, is the most liberal in the world in regards to sexual abnormalities. Nowhere in the world are the slightest sexual peculiarities so viciously prosecuted, so brutally punished as they are in our United States. Nowhere has the blackmailer such a rich field, nowhere does he reap such a rich harvest.

    [...]

    I cannot however conclude without expressing a deep wish that such Institutes might exist in every large city, or at least in every large capital. The United States could certainly use five or six such Institutes---say one in New York, one in Boston, one in Chicago, one in Atlanta, one in San Francisco. They would all have plenty of work to do, and less ignorance and consequently less misery in sex matters would be the result.

    And he ends on a very sad note with historical hindsight:

    May the Foundation be built on a permanant, never to be shaken foundation.

    The article can be found here on pages 391-396: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015011423632

    :trans-heart: