Zhou Enlai was the most popular leader in China during the 20th century. Even among the madness during the Cultural Revolution, he continued to make an effort to pursue democratic ideas, while at the same time supporting leaders like Mao. He exercised his diplomatic skill to open China rather than isolate it from the rest of the world.

Childhood In 1898, Zhou was bon in Huaian, Jiangsu province. Four months after his birth, he was adopted. Shortly after that his new foster father died. In 1907, when he was nine years old, his mother died, and his foster mother died. The despair and poverty brought the family to new lows. Zhou often worked the fields to secure food for his family. In 1910, when he was ten years old, he left Huaian and went to Manchuria. He studied academics there, and had excellent grades most of the time. In those days, he learned politics, which had a deep impact on his life. When he was fifteen years old, he began middle school in Tianjin. From ages 17 to 19, he studied in Japan.

Life In 1920, he went to France. In 1921 knowing that the CCP was established in Shanghai, he became a member. During his study in France in 1922, he established the Chinese Communist's Youth Group. He studied in England, and then Germany. He held prominent military and political posts in the Communist party. From 1934 to 1935, he participated in the Long March. And when the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, he became premier and foreign minister. In 1958 he resigned as foreign minister, but retained his title as Premiere. As a practical person, Zhou maintained his position throughout all of Communist China's ideological upheavals, including the Great Leap Forward of 1958, and subsequently the Cultural Revolution. He made an effort to release comrades imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, and as a result Jiang Qing and Red Guards criticized him. Before he became ill, in the early 1970s he was largely responsible for China's reestablishing contact with the West. And on January 8, 1976, when he was seventy-eight years old, he died, just a few months before Chairman Mao Zedong died.

Legacy After his death, one million five hundred thousand people came to see his coffin, and memorials for him were held everywhere. His sophisticated diplomatic skill brought a lot of profit to China.