Editing Zhou Enlai (section)

===Diplomacy with China's communist neighbors===

[[File:Signing Sino-North Korean Mutual Aid and Cooperation Friendship Treaty, July 1961.jpg|thumb|Zhou with [[Kim Il Sung]] at the signing of the Sino-North Korean Mutual Aid and Cooperation Friendship Treaty in 1961]]

After Stalin died on 5 March 1953, Zhou left for Moscow and attended Stalin's funeral four days later. Mao, curiously, decided not to travel to Moscow, possibly because no senior Soviet politician had yet travelled to Beijing, or because Stalin had rejected an offer to meet with Mao in 1948 (nevertheless, a huge memorial service in honor of Stalin was held in [[Beijing]]'s [[Tiananmen Square]] with Mao and hundreds of thousands more in attendance). While in Moscow, Zhou was notably received with considerable respect by Soviet officials, being permitted to stand with the [[Soviet Union|USSR]]'s new leaders—[[Vyacheslav Molotov]], [[Nikita Khrushchev]], [[Georgy Malenkov]], and [[Lavrentiy Beria]]—instead of with the other "foreign" dignitaries who attended. With these four leaders, Zhou walked directly behind the gun carriage bearing Stalin's coffin. Zhou's diplomatic efforts on his travel to Moscow were rewarded shortly after when, in 1954, Khrushchev himself visited Beijing to take part in the fifth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic.<ref name="Barnouin and Yu 117"/><ref name="EarlyPRC2">Spence 525</ref>

Throughout the 1950s, Zhou worked to tighten economic and political relations between China and other Communist states, coordinating China's foreign policy with Soviet policies promoting solidarity among political allies. In 1952, Zhou signed an economic and cultural agreement with the [[Mongolian People's Republic]], giving ''de facto'' recognition of the independence of what had been known as "[[Outer Mongolia]]" in Qing times. Zhou also worked to conclude an agreement with [[Kim Il Sung]] in order to help the postwar reconstruction of [[North Korea]]'s economy. Pursuing the goals of peaceful diplomacy with China's neighbor, Zhou held amicable talks with Myanmar's prime minister, [[U Nu]], and promoted China's efforts to send supplies to [[Ho Chi Minh]]'s Vietnamese rebels known as the [[Viet Minh|Vietminh]].<ref name="EarlyPRC1" />