Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai), the son of wealthy parents, was born in Jiangsu, China, in 1898. He was educated in a missionary college in Tianjin before studying at a university in Japan. He moved to France in 1920 where he helped to form the overseas branch of the Chinese Communist Party. He also lived in Britain and Germany before returning to China in 1924.
As members of the Communist Party Mao Zedong, Zhu De and Zhou Enlai adapted the ideas of Lenin who had successfully achieved a revolution in Russia in 1917. They argued that in Asia it was important to concentrate on the countryside rather than the towns, in order to create a revolutionary elite.
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