Premier Zhou Enlai
July 19, 1971

"Chairman Mao tells us that one must rely on one's 
own efforts. We cannot impose on you, nor can you 
just mechanically copy from us. You can see the 
American youth are gradually raising their 
political consciousness. According to our 
experience, it is always intellectuals who start 
out, because it is easier for them to accept 
revolutionary theory, and revolutionary experience 
from books. But for the movement to succeed you 
must go among the workers, because in the United 
States the working class is the great majority of 
the people, and the peasantry is quite small. And 
so to do that, you must go into them deeply. We 
have only our experience, but we are not at all 
well acquainted with your situation. So that must 
depend upon your own efforts. . . .

Self-reliance proceeds from independence, and 
taking the initiative in your own hands. Yes, one 
must go through some arduous process."

Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, China! Inside the 
People's Republic (NY: Bantam Books, 1972), p. 361.


"Chairman Mao himself has paid attention to the 
American situation and he has also asked us all to 
note the fact that it can be said that the United 
States is now on the eve of a great storm. But the 
question of how this storm will be developed 
exactly is your task, not ours. We can only tell 
you about something of our hopes."

(Ibid., p. 347)

[mim3@mim.org adds: Formally speaking, it was
Zhou Enlai's job to meet foreigners if the
dictatorship of the proletariat's top officials
thought it important enough. We are thankful that
Zhou Enlai gave the informal interview, because it
no doubt helped sell many copies of the Bantam Book
that resulted.

Today's modern revisionists justify ignoring study 
of imperialist country conditions by quoting Mao 
on those conditions. They leave out how many times 
Mao warned against copying outside advice without 
knowing one's own conditions. In fact, one of the 
first two line struggles in the Communist Party of 
China centered on this problem.

We provide the above quote, because the revisionists
take advantage of the most backward people who
cannot see the general principle when expressed in 
Chinese conditions. Although the statement is not
official, it echoes something Mao said countless times
and it was Zhou Enlai's job to say it countless times
as head-of-state meeting many foreigners--that
Beijing can't do the best scientific job with regard
to India, never mind distant places like the united $tates
that are not semi-colonial and semi-feudal. The above
was a statement to a group of Amerikkkans visiting
China as a part of getting themselves educated about
socialism, Vietnam and the Cold War.

Zhou Enlai was a highly talented persyn able to follow
centralism in many situations where he did not agree
with the line. For those who would downgrade the above
quote, we would point out that Zhang Chunqiao and 
Yao Wenyuan were there when Zhou Enlai made the statement.
It was not a case of Zhou Enlai trying to pass a secret
message about his real persynal line.

Also, at the time of this conversation with
Amerikkkans, Progressive Labor Party
had broken ties with Mao to go down the crypto-Trotskyist
road and the u.$. imperialists had smashed the Black Panther
Party. In the whole conversation, Zhou never mentions any
U.$.-based party and instead makes it clear that China would
like to be in contact with various people from the united $tates
from various nationalities.

Of course, we now have a disagreement with Zhou Enlai, because
having looked into this, the u.$.-based communist movement
has stated that we have to accept that Germany in 1945 may
be the relevant parallel and experience. So for the leaders of
the Chinese proletariat to say it is not their job to 
bring down u.$. imperialism is understandable but not correct.
Unfortunately, thanks to the uneven development of the communist
movements in various places, there was no MIM to have this debate
out with Mao and his comrades.]