Gao Wenqian | Zhou Enlai in His Later Years

The book’s descriptions of many historical events are vastly different from those of the CCP. The book extensively quotes from Gao Wenqian’s past excerpts of internal CCP unpublished letters, documents, meeting records, and interviews, revealing Zhou Enlai’s grievances with other CCP leaders from the Yan’an Rectification Movement in the 1940s to his death. Gao Wenqian claimed: “Zhou was ‘preserving his late years’ politically and was pulled into the water by Mao Zedong, acting as an executor of the Cultural Revolution, running errands for Mao, and owing debts in many matters.” After Mao Zedong successfully united Lin Biao and won over Zhou Enlai, he had the confidence to launch the Cultural Revolution, which was the movement to “overthrow Liu Shaoqi.” Zhou Enlai was first the leader of the Liu Shaoqi special case group, and later echoed Jiang Qing in condemning Liu Shaoqi.

After Zhou Enlai was diagnosed with cancer, Mao Zedong ignored the advice of medical experts for early treatment and put forward four instructions, including “no surgery,” intending to delay the illness, causing Zhou to miss the opportunity for early detection and treatment, and pushing Zhou to his death. The preface of the book states, “The publication of this book is a memorial gift to my mother who passed away at the end of 2001.” He pointed out, “This is because of threats from the CCP, and the book could only be published after my mother’s death.” The book, with about 500,000 characters, was published by Mirror Books on April 5, 2003, becoming the 23rd book in the publisher’s “Truth” series.

Serialized on the Multi-Dimensional News Network from January 2006 to the present. In the book’s postscript, Gao Wenqian stated that he wrote this book for two purposes: one is to re-evaluate Zhou Enlai and restore his true historical face, which is completely different from the CCP’s consistent praise of Zhou Enlai; the other is to break through the forbidden zone of Cultural Revolution research in mainland China and expose the dark side of the Cultural Revolution and the absurdity of high-level politics in mainland China.