Free Nixon and Mao by Margaret MacMillan Page A

his post. He worked extraordinary hours and kept a grasp on an extraordinary range of issues. Perhaps without him, China would have gone even further into anarchy than it did during the Cultural Revolution.
    The Chinese as well as foreigners tended to see Mao as the radical and Chou as the moderate; Mao as the one who caused the damage with his wild policies and Chou who picked up the pieces. There was much truth in this, but it is not all the truth. Chou was also a revolutionary, determined to transform China’s society so that it could become strong and could take its rightful place in the world. For him as for the other Chinese Communists, revolution and nationalism were intertwined. Mao spoke for them all on October 1, 1949, when he proclaimed the People’s Republic of China from the great Gate of Heavenly Peace, overlooking Tiananmen Square. “We, the 475 million Chinese people, have stood up and our future is infinitely bright.” 27
    In November 1949, at the first meeting of China’s new Foreign Ministry, Chou told his colleagues that the century of humiliation was over. The new regime had nothing to learn from its predecessors, such as the Qing or the Guomindang: “all dealt with foreign affairs with their knees on the ground.” The new China must approach the other powers as an equal. “We should have an independent spirit. We should take initiatives and should be fearless and confident.” 28
    Both Mao and Chou also saw the world through eyes that had been shaped by their study of Marxism. There were the capitalist powers, led after 1945 by the United States, and there were the socialist ones, their number greatly increased with the spread of Soviet power into central Europe and then the victory of the Chinese Communists. The two camps were doomed to struggle until one—socialism, if you believed Marx—was victorious. Communist diplomacy should be in the service of the final victory of Communism. Nations, Chou told the novices at the new Foreign Ministry in 1949, must always be ready to fight: “There may not be a war of swords every year, but as sure as day turns into night, there will be a constant war of words, every day of the year.” 29
    With his deep-seated preference for what was practical over what was purely theoretical, Chou insisted that China’s foreign policy must always take into consideration actual conditions, exploiting the differences between the capitalists and even making compromises with them, and so win time. As he pointed out in a major statement on foreign policy in 1930, the Soviet Communists had saved their regime by submitting to a punitive treaty with their enemy Germany in 1918. Fortunately, since Chou was obliged to operate within guidelines laid down by Mao, the chairman took the same approach: “What we call concrete Marxism is Marxism that has taken on concrete form, that is, Marxism applied to the concrete struggle in the concrete conditions prevailing in China.” 30 In his management of China’s foreign relations, Chou was flexible over tactics, seeking, as he put it, “concurrence while shelving differences.” 31 He told Kissinger, in one of their many talks, “One must be cool-headed and analyze things.” 32 Chou had been responsible during the Second World War for negotiating a common front with the Guomindang against the Japanese; he was prepared to compromise even with enemies in order to safeguard the party and its China. Perhaps, too, as his enemies suggested from time to time, he betrayed the influence of his early classical education. In traditional Confucian thought, harmony and the golden mean were valued above conflict and disagreement.
    Over the years, Chou became a great negotiator. One of his early heroes, when he lived in Europe in the early 1920s, was David Lloyd George, the British prime minister at the time. Chou admired him for his realism, his understanding of the contemporary scene, and his ability to bring different sides together in a way