May 4, 1954
CHOU EN LAI: (From an article by Willi Frischauer) London – Precisely 30 years ago (in 1924), a young, elegant man, unusually tall for a Chinese, returned to his birthplace of Tientsin after studying social and political sciences in Berlin, Paris and Geneva. That young man was Chou En Lai, now prime minister and foreign minister of Communist China. He was the son of a rich mandarin but he joined the newly formed Communist Party in his country early on. Now Chou En Lai is back in Geneva at the head of a delegation from China and is considered a «political enigma,» the mysterious man who will be the protagonist in the strangest of all international conferences. (…) Mr Anthony Eden and the British delegation are making assumptions as to the stance he will take. The Soviet delegation is waiting to see if Chou En Lai will agree with the statements of Vyacheslav Molotov or whether he will express an independent view as the representative of a nation of 400 million people. The French are looking on with concern, hoping for peace in Indochina. The Americans are determined to keep him in his place (…).
