Son of a wealthy Chinese mandarin, Zhou Enlai rose to become one of communist China’s greatest diplomats. He studied in Japan and then in France, where he met the future leader of modern Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, for the first time. Zhou Enlai returned to southern China where he joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1922 and ran the Whampoa Political Military Academy outside Guangzhou (Canton). There, he renewed his friendship with Ho Chi Minh and supported the latter’s efforts to build up a revolutionary movement outside of French Indochina. Following the outbreak of the Chinese civil war, Zhou made the long march to Yan’an and became one of Mao Zedong’s closest aides. With the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Zhou served long terms as prime minister (1949–1974) and minister of Foreign Affairs (1949–1958).
As director of China’s foreign relations, Zhou Enlai supported the Chinese decision to recognize Ho Chi Minh’s Democratic Republic of Vietnam in January 1950. In 1953, with the death of Joseph Stalin and the signing of a cease-fire in Korea, Zhou Enlai joined the Soviets and the French to try to find a peaceful solution to the other hot war in Asia, the Indochinese one. Zhou Enlai played a particularly important role in the Geneva Conference of 1954, determined to find a political solution to the war in order to keep the Americans from replacing the French. One of his most important strategies was his move to neutralize former French Indochina as well as the rest of non-communist Asia against the Americans, even if it meant accepting the division of Vietnam in order to realize that goal. While Zhou Enlai did pressure the Vietnamese to rally to this strategy, new documents show that the Vietnamese, in particular Zhou Enlai’s longtime ally Ho Chi Minh, shared his fears of American military intervention. By refusing to export “communism” to Asia, as Zhou had promised to Jawaharlal Nehru during the Geneva Conference, Zhou was successful in getting communist China accepted as a major player in the Bandung Conference of 1955. See also NEUTRALIZATION OF INDOCHINA.