Mayumi Itoh. The making of China’s peace with Japan: what Xi Jinping should learn from Zhou Enlai

Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd., 2017. — xvi, 299 p. — ISBN: 9789811040085 (eBook).This is the final part of a three-volume study of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai (March 1898–January 1976) and Japan, in commemoration of the 100 year anniversary of Zhou’s visit to Japan in 1917 in order to study at a higher school in Tokyo. It reviews and updates all of the previous studies on contemporary Sino-Japanese relations, by this author, by juxtaposing them with the newly published official biography of Zhou Enlai (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2) and the official Chronology of Zhou Enlai, 1949–1976 (Vol. 1, Vol. 2 and Vol. 3), as well as with the previous official Chronology of Zhou Enlai, 1898–1949. It is no exaggeration to state that a significant aspect of Zhou’s life and career was the contemplation of strategies for how to deal with Japan. Zhou grew up observing Japanese expansionism in China. He was born just after the first Sino-Japanese War and grew up in the middle of the Russo-Japanese War, in which the two countries vied for spheres of influence in Manchuria (China’s northeast region). Zhou studied at an upper elementary school in Fengtian (Mukden, current Shenyang), the former capital of China’s northeast. Then, he enrolled in Nankai Middle School in Tianjin, where Western imperial powers and Japan occupied concession territories in the city. Upon graduating from Nankai Middle School, Zhou went to Japan to study at a higher school in Tokyo from 1917 to 1919.