A book slated to be published in Hong Kong in 2016 claims that Zhou Enlai, Communist China’s much-respected first premier and Mao Zedong’s righthand man, was probably gay. The author claims that despite Zhou’s long marriage, there is evidence that he had once been in love with a boy who was his classmate. The assertion will likely be controversial in China, where the Communist Party maintains that its top leaders are morally irreproachable and where homophobia is rampant, though homosexuality is no longer officially repressed.
