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China's leader, Xi Jinping, is one of the most powerful individuals in the world?and one of the least understood. Much can be learned, however, about both Xi Jinping and the nature of the party he leads from the memory and legacy of his father, the revolutionary Xi Zhongxun (1913?2002). The elder Xi served the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for more than seven decades. He worked at the right hand of prominent leaders Zhou Enlai and Hu Yaobang. He helped build the Communist base area that saved Mao Zedong in 1935, and he initiated the Special Economic Zones that launched China into the reform era after Mao's death. He led the Party's United Front efforts toward Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Taiwanese. And though in 1989 he initially sought to avoid violence, he ultimately supported the Party's crackdown on the Tiananmen protesters.

The Party's Interests Come First is the first biography of Xi Zhongxun written in English. This biography is at once a sweeping story of the Chinese revolution and the first several decades of the People's Republic of China and a deeply personal story about making sense of one's own identity within a larger political context. Drawing on an array of new documents, interviews, diaries, and periodicals, Joseph Torigian vividly tells the life story of Xi Zhongxun, a man who spent his entire life struggling to balance his own feelings with the Party's demands. Through the eyes of Xi Jinping's father, Torigian reveals the extraordinary organizational, ideological, and coercive power of the CCP?and the terrible cost in human suffering that comes with it.

Reviews

"This brilliant biography of Xi Zhongxun, revolutionary politician and father of China's current leader, reveals the human dramas and intrigue behind the curtain in Chinese politics. Joseph Torigian is a prodigious researcher whose interviews with the Dalai Lama and others are worth the price of the book. A vividly written page-turner and a major scholarly accomplishment."
?Susan Shirk, University of California, San Diego "Joseph Torigian's trademark indefatigable pursuit of detailed information illuminates Xi Zhongxun's experience in working under Mao and Deng in a party culture that leadership should vest in a 'core leader' who would have to be obeyed, and where no significant force stood up to either of them. This mammoth study provides much to reflect on continuities from Mao to Xi Jinping through Deng."
?Frederick C. Teiwes, University of Sydney "In China today, people often ask the question: how could Xi Zhongxun have had a son like this? The son in question is China's current president and Communist Party boss, Xi Jinping. Joseph Torigian's biography of Xi Zhongxun addresses this question only in its final chapter, but his rich and densely documented study of the father's life and career from the 1930s through the Tiananmen incident of 1989 is important in its own right?as an account of Xi Zhongxun's unshakable dedication to the Party and the revolution. Xi paid an enormous personal and political price for this dedication, but he remained loyal to the end. Torigian's fine study pays careful attention to Xi's personal and political life, and to the complex and ever-changing dynamics of politics in China's capital, adding important new texture to our understanding of China's political elite under Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and now Xi Jinping."
?Joseph W. Esherick, University of California, San Diego "A fascinating dive into the contradictions and internal struggles that defined the life of one of the Chinese Communist Party's leading figures. Rich in detail and light on grand pronouncements, Torigian's book illuminates the complexity and tension inherent in Chinese leaders' efforts to define and remain loyal to the party against stiff and constantly changing political winds."
?Jessica Chen Weiss, Johns Hopkins University "A towering achievement and required reading for those interested in China. Through exhaustive research and forensic detail, Joseph Torigian tells the gripping story of the man whose son now leads China and the party he helped build. Fascinating, revealing, and easily one of the best books on China in years."
?Rush Doshi, Georgetown University "Fascinating.... One of the easiest to read, most gripping doorstoppers I've ever had the pleasure of reading."?Jeremy Goldkorn, ChinaFile

About the Author

Joseph Torigian is Associate Professor at the School of International Service at American University and a Research Fellow at the Hoover History Lab at Stanford University.

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Map
  1. The Party's Interests Come First
  PART I THE PARTY'S "FOOTHOLD": The Shaanxi Years
  2. The Young Wanderer
  3. Who Saved Whom: The Rise of the Base Areas and the Arrival of Mao 
  4. The Yan'an Era
  5. Love and Revolution
  6. War on the Nationalists and the Peasants
  PART II BUILDING THE NEW REGIME
  7. King of the Northwest
  8. Political Means, with Military Force as a Supplement: Ethnic Minorities in the Northwest 
  9. Ideology and Power Politics in the Beijing of the Early People's Republic
  10. The Perils of Intimacy at Home and Abroad
  11. "Military Suppression Combined with Political Struggle": The Radicalization of Ethnic and Religious Policy 
  12. Home Life in the Capital
  PART III CATASTROPHE
  13. The Great Leap Forward
  14. Liu Zhidan
  15. The Cultural Revolution
  16. The Xi Family Slowly Rebuilds
  PART IV THE PARTY'S "LAUNCHPAD": The Guangdong Years
  17. Facing the Consequences of the Cultural Revolution
  18. Blazing a Bloody Trail
  19. Opening to the West
  PART V TRYING TO SAVE THE REVOLUTION
  20. A New Order at the Secretariat and the National People's Congress
  21. Princeling Politics
  22. The United Front Restored and Restrained
  23. A New Era in Ethnic and Religious Affairs
  24. "Things Were Going So Well!"
  25. Xi and the Fate of Global Communism
  PART VI CATASTROPHE AGAIN
  26. "It Is Necessary to Also Have a Spiritual Civilization!"
  27. The Deep Waters of Zhongnanhai
  28. Tiananmen Square
  29. The Final Years
  30. Fathers and Sons
  Acknowledgments
  Abbreviations
  Notes
  Bibliography
  Index

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