The Party's Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping

The Party's Interests Come First is the first English-language biography of Xi Zhongxun, the father of China's current leader, Xi Jinping. It is both a story of the Chinese revolution and the first several decades of the People's Republic of China and a personal account of developing one's own sense of identity within a larger political context. Drawing on an array of documents, interviews, diaries, and periodicals, Joseph Torigian introduces Xi Zhongxun. He helped build the Communist base area that saved Mao Zedong in 1935, worked closely with top leaders Zhou Enlai and Hu Yaobang, and oversaw the Special Economic Zones that launched China's reform era. In an interview conducted on August 21, 2025, Joseph Torigian , in conversation with Victor Shih , explores the organizational, ideological, and coercive power of the Chinese Communist Party through the life of Xi Zhongxun – and the huge cost in human suffering that accompanies it. About this program

You can listen to The Party's Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Party's Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping is an episode from NCUSCR Interviews by National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

This episode is 34:14 long.

This episode was published on Dec 22, 2025.

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