Zhou Enlai and the Fu Tian Incident

In 1930, after he arrived in Raichin, Mao began cleaning up the ranks of the party through a number of vicious and violent purges. Where did Zhou Enlai stand on all this? His greatest fear was infiltration by Jiang's KMT spies. Although Zhou felt the same way as far as rooting out the spies and anti-Bolshevik elements, he disagreed with the violence with which Mao carried out the purges. The Soviet-led 28 Bolsheviks came down hard on Zhou for his support of Mao. In fact, when the watershed Ningdu Conference was held to decide what to do with the First Field Army, it was Zhou who was made the political commiss