Editing Zhou Enlai (section)

===Mao's response===
After Zhou's death, Mao issued no statements acknowledging Zhou's achievements or contributions and sent no condolences to Zhou's widow, herself a senior Party leader.<ref name="DeathMao1">Spence 610</ref> Mao forbade his staff from wearing black mourning armbands.<ref name="Philip Short p. 620">Philip Short, ''Mao – A Life'', Hodder & Stoughton, 1999; p. 620</ref> Whether or not Mao would have attended Zhou's funeral, which was held in the Great Hall of the People, remains in question as Mao himself was in very poor health and unable to do so in any event.<ref name="Philip Short p. 620"/> Mao did, however, have a wreath sent to the funeral.<ref name="Philip Short p. 620"/>

Mao attacked a proposal to have Zhou publicly declared a great Marxist, and rejected a request that he make a brief appearance at Zhou's funeral, instructing his nephew, [[Mao Yuanxin]], to explain that he could not attend because doing so would be seen as a public admission that he was being forced to "rethink the Cultural Revolution", as Zhou's later years had been closely associated with reversing and moderating its excesses. Mao worried that public expressions of mourning would later be directed against him and his policies and backed the "five nos" campaign (see below) to suppress public expressions of mourning for Zhou after the late Premier's death.<ref>Teiwes and Sun 217–218</ref>