Chou En-lai

By Henry Kissinger

When I met Chou in 1971, he had been a leader of the Chinese Communist movement for nearly 50 years. He had been the only Premier the People's Republic had had --nearly 22 years--and for nine of those years he had also been Foreign Minister. He was equally at home in philosophy, reminiscence, historical analysis, tactical probes, humorous repartee. His command of facts, in particular his knowledge of American events and, for that matter, of my own background, was stunning. There was little wasted motion either in his words or in his movements. Both reflected the inner tensions of a man concerned, as he stressed, with the endless daily problems of a people of 800 million and the effort to preserve ideological faith.

Chou could display an extraordinary personal graciousness. When junior members of our party took ill, he would visit them. Despite the gap in our protocol rank, he insisted that our meetings alternate between my residence and the Great Hall of the People. The Chinese seemed to regard him with special reverence, to see in him of all their leaders a special human quality. On a visit in late 1975 I asked a young interpreter about Chou's health; tears brimmed in her eyes as she told me he was gravely ill. It was no accident that he was so deeply mourned in China after his death, or that the extraordinary expressions of yearning for greater freedom that appeared in China in the late 1970s invoked and praised his name. He was one of the two or three most impressive men I have ever met. I had no illusions about the system Chou represented. Yet when Chou died, I felt a great sadness. The world would be less vibrant, the prospects less clearly seen. Neither of us had ever forgotten that our relationship was essentially ambiguous or overlooked the possibility that as history is counted our two countries' paths might be parallel for only a fleeting moment. After that, they might well find themselves again on opposite sides. But one of the rewards of my public life has been that I could work with a great man across the barriers of ideology in the endless struggle of statesmen to rescue some permanence from the tenuousness of human foresight.

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