/ News, Events, People
The Party’s Interests Come First – book presentation by Professor Joseph Torigian
On 20th October 2025, Professor Joseph Torigian made a stop at the Europainstitut on his world tour presenting his latest book – a critical biography of Xi Zhongxun, the late veteran Chinese revolutionary, high-ranking official and father of China’s current leader Xi Jinping.
The Party's Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping is the first biography of Xi Zhongxun written in English. Torigian spent over a decade working with archival and periodical sources and conducting interviews to create a comprehensive picture of Xi Zhongxun’s life – from a revolutionary youth to one of the top leaders of the People’s Republic of China.
Xi Zhongxun headed the propaganda department in the 1950s, governed the southern Guangdong Province in late 1970s and worked as a close aide to the reformist general secretary Zhao Ziyang, deposed over his support of the 1989 pro-democracy movement.
Torigian convincingly argues that Xi’s life provides a unique insight into the turbulent changes of 20th century China, as well as into the psychology of an individual senior official within the broader context of a one-party dictatorship suffering consecutive crises.
One of the book’s main themes is Xi Zhongxun’s almost religious devotion to the Chinese Communist Party. Despite in Torigian’s words “suffering extraordinarily even during the regime”, Xi continued believing that only the Party can save and preserve China. Even when Xi was imprisoned, physically attacked and reduced to poverty by fellow Party members and even when he disagreed with the 1989 Tian’anmen Square Massacre, he eventually always supported the Party line.
Torigian argues that Xi Jinping takes this trait from his father – the general secretary values his suffering, believing that this hardened him and his doubts forged in Xi a dedication to the Party much stronger than of those who have never faltered in their Party loyalty.
Joseph Torigian is an associate professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a center associate of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan.
For those who could not attend, but are interested in the topic, you can listen to a two-part podcast with Professor Torigian on Xi Zhongxun’s life (Part One, Part Two).