Zhou Enlai and the Foundations of Chinese Foreign Policy (review)

Abstract

Reviews 541 acknowledged master explore China. In the process, the reader also will be introduced to a sophisticated analysis ofscholarly disputes about the meaning of equality, the role ofritual, philosophic reductionism in ancient Greece and China, and shifts and turns in Chinese communism. Arthur Lewis Rosenbaum Claremont McKenna College ArthurRosenbaum is an associateprofessor ofhistoryspecializing in late nineteenthand early twentieth-century history. Kuo-kang Shao. Zhou Enlai and the Foundations ofChinese Foreign Policy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. xii, 370 pp. Hardcover $49.95, isbn 0312 -15892-0. In the introduction to his new book, Kuo-kang Shao notes that at the time he conceived this book in the summer of1986 there was "still no in-depth study of Zhou Enlai's concepts of statecraft available for a general audience" (p. ix). Subsequently , he regrets the lack of a "comprehensive study ofZhou's intellectual development and his influence on Chinese foreign policy during the period from 1949 to 1976" (p. 3). This reviewer should probably clarify that in his own volume, The Diplomacy ofZhou Enlai (St. Martin's/Macmillan Press, 1989), it was also indicated that "in neither China nor the West has there been a systematic study of the policies which sustained [Zhou Enlai's] rational practice ofdiplomacy in the service ofrevolution." The reviewer's volume was thereafter translated and issued by two separate publishing houses in Beijing, and a subsequent review article analyzed these two translations, together with a Chinese translation ofDickWilson's well-known biography on Zhou Enlai, in China Review International (vol. 1, no. 2 [Fall 1994]: 58-72). Zhou Enlai's diplomacy still enjoys extraordinary relevance to the study of international relations, and even with Shao's new study there is still room for further research and related academic controversy. Professor Shao asks much the same questions as I did in my 1989 volume, but he often answers differently.© 1998 by UniversitySnaQ retraces znou's career in order to identify the conceptualbasis ofhis "pragmatism," to analyze how this pragmatism affected Chinese foreign policy, and finally to assess Zhou's specific negotiating style and skills. In his ensuing analytical correlations Shao logically deploys the biographical detail ofZhou's forofHawai 'i Press 542 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 1998 mative intellectual development. This analysis reviews the traditional philosophical dimensions of Zhou's "pragmatism," which is then related to Zhou's participation in the ideas and politics ofthe May Fourth Movement. Shao's analysis of Zhou's European correspondence focuses particularly on his appreciation of European statecraft and international relations, but he may have given less attention than my 1989 volume as to how Zhou's view of social and economic conditions affected his understanding offoreign policy and the general drift to world war. Shao greatly improves on the historical record with a new, detailed analysis of Zhou's reactions to Charles Darwin, Thomas H. Huxley, John Dewey, and Hu Shih. He roots the famous slogans "seeking the truth from the facts" and yin shi zhi yi, or "doing what is guided by circumstances," within an imperial tradition of "Chinese pragmatism," but unfortunately this thematic material is not fully integrated with ongoing historical reference to the Yan'an era and the post-1949 MaoZhou appropriation of these same terms as key ideological constructs for understanding complex social and political realities. In fact, this brings out a major point ofdisagreement as to how best to understand the origins of Zhou's foreign policy "pragmatism" and negotiating style. Shao prefers to treat "ideology" as "dogma." For Marx, "ideology" might have invoked the "false consciousness" of the ruling class, but for both Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, "ideology" was also a "scientific" logic, or epistemology, that was eminently useful in unlocking the contradictions ofmaterial reality. For Mao and Zhou, praxis was part of ideology. Shao's analysis is consistent with mainstream distinctions between Mao's "ideology" and Zhou's "pragmatism." This distinction is further complemented in the tendency to bifurcate communist ideology and Chinese nationalism, but this begs the question as to whether Zhou as a communist leader realistically focused on China's national interest from within die Party's ideological framework. Zhou did indeed emphasize the...