Zhou Enlai in particular played a critical role in facilitating the ultimate agreement of July 20–21. Content in the conference’s early weeks to maintain a fairly low profile, his more activist posture from mid-June onward proved decisive, as the courteous elegance and diplomatic savvy for which he would in time be heralded came to the fore. “The godfather of the partition solution,” U.S. delegate Chester Cooper would call Zhou, and this seems fair. For although partition had been bandied about as a potential solution for many weeks prior to Geneva, it was the Chinese premier’s subtle but
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