Zhou Enlai, born on this day in 1898, was a communist revolutionary, statesman, and military officer who served as the 1st Premier of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1976. "All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means."
Zhou was educated in a missionary college in Tianjin before studying at a Japanese university. In Tianjin, he met his future wife, Deng Yingchao while participating in a radical political group known as the "Awakening Society". In 1920, Zhou moved to France, where he helped form the overseas branch of the Communist Party of China. He also lived in Britain and Germany before returning to China in 1924.
While working in the Political Department of the Whampoa Military Academy, Zhou was also made the secretary of the Communist Party of Guangdong-Guangxi, and served as the CPC representative with the rank of major-general.
After the Chinese Civil War broke out in 1927, Zhou served in the communist forces, helping establish and oversee a network of underground cells of communist resistance. Zhou played a leading role in the Long March of 1934-35, an arduous military retreat of communist forces over 8,000 miles.
Following the Zunyi Conference in 1935, Mao Zedong became Zhou's assistant. After the conclusion of the Long March, Mao officially took over Zhou Enlai's leading position in the CPC, while Zhou took a secondary position as vice-chairman. Both would hold their leadership positions until their deaths in 1976.
Zhou was a prominent participant in the 1955 AsianβAfrican Conference, held in Indonesia. The conference produced a declaration in strongly in favor of peace, the abolition of nuclear arms, general arms reduction, and the principle of universal representation at the United Nations. Zhou was critical of American imperial aggression and stated "the population of Asia will never forget that the first atom bomb was exploded on Asian soil."
Zhou passed away from bladder cancer on January 8th, 1976, just nine months before Mao Zedong's death in September that year.
"Today the first unification of the Chinese people has emerged. The people themselves have become the masters of Chinese soil, and the rule of the reactionaries in China has been irrevocably overthrown."
Zhou Enlai, from "Chinese People Will not Tolerate Aggression" (October 1950)
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I asked google AI "if every oil field in the middle east shut down today how long would it take for worldwide famine to occur?" and I really hope this is an instance of it making shit up because it was like "yeah dude probably 3-6 months. It'll be bad. Also it's not just oil, but 30-50% of fertilizers worldwide travel through the strait of Hormuz" like oh cool I'm glad that isn't being disrupted
Like holy shit food prices are never going to go down. All because of fucking made up artificial scarcity from all these dipshit wars fucking shit up
Prices go up in the imperial core and it sucks for sure, itll be harder. More people will be impoverished. Prices going up in the imperial core though means more food gets shipped there (thats where prices are up) which means there will be less in the global south for any price.
Canada has plenty of oil, fertilizer, agricultural land and Mexico (and the US depending on tarrif regime) are nearby too for ag products. But even for us its gonna suck, just not as bad as the global south.
Yea I'm getting really fucking sick of shit getting harder, I'm really getting fucking sick of working more and more for less and less