CHINA: The Great Dissembler

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With rhetorical sarcasm, the U.S. Secretary of State asked at Berlin: "Who is this Chou En-lai?"

There have been many and varied answers, some old, some recent, some true, some wrong, some regretted. From an old U.S. China hand: "A sort of Chinese Talleyrand." From a fellow-traveling Indian diplomat: "A second Nehru!" From a onetime kingpin in the Chinese Communist movement: "A Chinese Molotov." Chiang Kai-shek is reported to have called him "a reasonable Communist." General George Marshall once spoke of him with "friendship and esteem" and thought him a man...

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