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Joseph Torigian, "The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping" (Stanford UP, 2025)
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- [00:00]
Marshall Poe
Hello everybody. This is Marshall Poe. I'm the editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to the New Books Network, I imagine you like to read and I'm wondering if you have a goal to read more this year. How about a goal to read more of what you love and less of what you don't? The Proofread podcast is here to help. Hosted by Casey and Tyler, two English professors and avid readers with busy lives, Proofread helps you decide what books are worth spending your precious time on and what books aren't. They feature 15 minute episodes that give you everything you need to know about a book to decide if you should read it or skip it. You'll get a brief synopsis, fun and witty commentary, no spoilers and no sponsored reviews. It's just what Casey and Tyler think. Life's too short to read a bad book. So subscribe to the Proofread podcast today. And by the way, there's a new season coming. Thanks very much.
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Nicholas Gordon
Lindsay Lohan are back in Disney's Freakier Friday, now streaming on Disney.
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We switched bodies.
- [01:31]
Joseph Turing Yin
I am freaking out right now. I think I just peed a little. It's an absolute riot and the only.
- [01:37]
Nicholas Gordon
Movie that can be described as so much weirder than the last time.
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Nicholas Gordon
It's the Frequel.
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Nicholas Gordon
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- [01:50]
Joseph Turing Yin
Rated pg.
- [01:52]
Marshall Poe
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:57]
Nicholas Gordon
Hello, I'm Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast and in partnership with the New Books Network. In this podcast we interview fiction and nonfiction authors working in around and about the Asia Pacific region. Zhi Zhongshun's career spanned the entirety of China's modern history. Born just two years after the 1911 revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty, Xi was an early member of the Chinese Communist Party, took part in the Second World War, became an early leader of the prc, was purged, survived the Cultural Revolution, was rehabilitated and helped jumpstart China's opening up as a leader in Guangdong Province. He also happens to be the father of Xi Jinping. China's current president, Joseph Turing Yin has written an extensive biography of Xi Zhongshun titled the Party's Interests Come the Life of Ji Xongshun, Father of Xi Jinping. And he joins us today to talk through Xi's long and very eventful life. Joseph is associate professor at the School of International Service at American University and a research fellow at the Hoover History Lab at Stanford University. So, Joseph, thank you so much for coming on the show today to talk about your biography of Xi Zhongshun. You know, other than the fact that he's the father of Xi Jinping, what makes Xi Zhongshun an important figure to study in Chinese modern history?
- [03:13]
Joseph Turing Yin
So I wrote the book in part to give people a sense of the milieu in which Xi Jinping grew up. But I think that the bigger takeaway for people who read the book will be to get a sense of what the Chinese Communist Party was like during the 20th century, to help people understand the motivations and the tensions for someone who is a member of this organization. So Xi Zhongshun was someone who was very proximate to debates within the party about how to organize elite politics, ideology, the united front, ethnic politics, and relations with foreign leftist, revolutionary and communist parties. And to the extent that there's a through line in his life, it's how much he suffered at the hands of the Party, but nevertheless remained devoted to it. And I hope that my book helps people understand why people like him who had this Bolshevik communist worldview, that kind of thing actually wasn't something that would shake your conviction. But for them, it was something that they took a lot of pride in because it showed that no matter what you experienced, you were still devoted to the Party.
- [04:18]
Nicholas Gordon
So let's maybe start at the very beginning, or at least kind of Xi's early history with the Communists. I mean, he spends time in prison. He then sets up this. This. This thing in the northwest. But kind of what. What Xi's kind of at the very beginning, like, how does he get roped into working with the Communists? And what. What, what are his early revolutionary activities?
- [04:39]
Joseph Turing Yin
He was born in Shanxi Province, which is where Qin Shi Huang had forged the first unified Chinese state. He was born near Xi', an, which is, of course, the city from which emperors had ruled for millennia. Many of your listeners have probably heard of the terracotta soldiers. They're, of course, discovered near Xi'. An. But by the time that Xi Zhongshun was born in 1913, that's two years after the collapse of the Qing Dynasty. This was an area that had been rocked by many years of war and banditry and famine. So it was the kind of place where it was in a place of extremes, right? Where you had all of the legacy of these most famous moments in Chinese history. But at the same time, when you looked around, you saw just how far China had fallen. But that didn't mean that Xi Zhongshun, despite this attraction to radicalism that emerged from that, really understood Communism. He admitted later on that at the time, he didn't really have an appreciation for the sort of intellectual qualities of Marxism. He wasn't really attracted to it because of its interpretation of class relations. He first started getting interested in the Party when the Communists were still in an alliance with the Nationalists. But that all changed famously In April of 1927, when the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai Shek betrayed the Communists, and they were massacred and butchered all across the country, including in Shanxi, including in the schools. And it was at that moment of fear and violence that xi Zhongshun, at 15 years old, was ordered to commit his first revolutionary act, to kill an academic administrator at his school. It's a failed assassination attempt. A lot of teachers get sick, but no one dies. And Xi Zhongshun is thrown into jail. And it's while he's in that jail that he officially joins the Party.
- [06:34]
Nicholas Gordon
So then. So then what's this thing about. About. About Xi being setting up something in the northwest? I mean, what's this kind of. Which becomes kind of the sense of, like, maybe it's an alternate base of revolutionary power kind of separate from Mao, which becomes somewhat of a. Of a problematic issue later on, I think. But could you just kind of explain what happens there for me?
- [06:56]
Joseph Turing Yin
So after this Nationalist crackdown that I just described to you, the Communists come to understand that the revolution isn't going to happen in the cities. And so you saw a lot of base areas that were created outside of the urban centers, where it was easier for Nationalists to project power. And many of those base areas were completely destroyed, but one of the ones that persisted was in Shanxi was in the northwest. And it was created not just by Xi Zhongshun, but also Party luminaries with names like Liu Zhidan and Gao Gang, which are names that people who study history, I'm sure, have heard of. But many of the other base areas were destroyed, including the Central base area, which was led of course, by Mao Zedong in the southeast. And after it was destroyed, the Party center went on the famous Long March. And they show up in this town in the middle of nowhere. And Mao reads in a newspaper that there is a base area in Shanxi. And so that's where, where they set up shop.
- [07:54]
Nicholas Gordon
And so from, from there we're kind of moving then through to the, to the second, to the Second World War. And I mean, she's involved. He seems to be involved in everything, but in this case, he's kind of involved in kind of working with the Nationalists, but also kind of working against the Nationalists, like, like what is he trying to do during the, during the war?
- [08:14]
Joseph Turing Yin
So when the Japanese launch the full blown invasion of China, Central China, the Communists and the Nationalists are in this very delicate dance where they're both working with each other and competing at the same time. And Xi Zhongsheng is at the very center of that because within the broader base area, he is stationed first on the southern border and then on the northeast border. And it's this liminal world where you have shifting alliances, you have people who are working for the Communists, for the Nationalists. And these people like Xi Zhongshun need to figure out who's on your side, who's against you, and who's in the middle, and who you want to empower, who you want to undermine, and who you want to win over, and also how you balance carrots and sticks. And so this is really kind of, you know, the very heart of politics. And Xi Zhongshun is at the very center of it because he's at these very vulnerable regions on the borders. And he does a pretty good job, which I think is part of the reason why the Party decides to entrust him with more and more meaningful positions in the future.
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Nicholas Gordon
So eventually the PRC gets set up. And one of Xi's early responsibilities during these early years is helping to set up the country's policy towards ethnic groups and minority groups. And especially in these early years, I mean, how did this policy kind of develop and change as the Communist Party tried to figure out how to work with these different kind of, again, ethnic minority and religious groups.
- [09:52]
Joseph Turing Yin
So we already talked about the Party's influence operations against the Nationalists, which is something that Xi Zhongxian spent a lot of time on. But the so called United Front also was applied to ethnic minorities. And the reason Xi Zhongshun was at the very center of how the Party thought about its relations with these ethnic minorities is because in the last years of the 1940s and the early years of the 1950s, Xi Zhongshun is the leader of the so called Northwest Bureau, which includes a giant swath of the country, Uyghurs in Xinjiang, but also Muslim Hui and Tibetans in provinces like Qinghai and Gansu. And so Xi Zhongshun explicitly says that to do work in the Northwest means doing ethnic work. And as the party is moving into these territories, it's very bloody, There's a lot of repression. But they're also coming to understand that there are more and less costly ways of projecting power. And a less costly way is to find people within these regions who have respect and status within their communities and use them as a sort of bridge. And so one of the most famous United Front targets in this period in this area is the Panchen Lama. And so I'm sure all of your listeners know who the Dalai Lama is. But the second most prominent figure in Tibetan Buddhism is the Panchen Lama, who was a young man at this time. And the very first senior revolutionary he ever met was Xi Zhongshun. And it established a decades long relationship that was certainly instrumental in some ways, but I think also had genuine elements of friendship as well. Once they're in these areas, they're not quite sure how quickly to move. With socialist transformation in Xinjiang, you have a leadership that decides to pursue this is in 1952, land reform in the nomadic areas and to kill more people with more repression, even though Xi Zhongshun, as leader of the Northwest Bureau, had told him not to. And they are purged from the leadership of Xinjiang for being too radical.
- [11:51]
Nicholas Gordon
You know, I, I want to take a, take a side step here before we start going into even more history. You know, what do we know about, about Xi as a, as a government official? You know, what was his attitude towards policy making? And I know that might be tricky because there's so much of it, but, but kind of, what do we know about, about like how he approached, you know, governance and politics and I guess party politics and all that stuff.
- [12:17]
Joseph Turing Yin
So Xi Jiangxun is interesting because he had very, very, very powerful positions in major regional powerhouses. We've talked about the Northwest, but later in his life, from 1978 to 1980, he was the party leader in Guangdong at the very beginning of China's reform and opening. And Guangdong was of course, at the very forefront of that process. And then in the 1950s and 1980s, first, he is the right hand man to Zhou Enlai, who's the premier. And then he is the right hand man to Hu Yaobang, the general secretary. And so he has these very significant positions where he's not quite at the top, but he has a lot of say in how these policies are implemented. And so people may think, well, why is it interesting to read a book about someone who is never formulating policy? And I think that Xi Zhongshun's life shows to a rather dramatic extent all of the tribulations and challenges that these deputies continuously face, whether they're at the party center or whether in the regions. Because what you have is a situation typically where the party tells you to do multiple things at once, but they don't say what matters or how to achieve them. If you go too far in one direction or the other, then you're a leftist or you're a rightist. That's an ideological problem. You also don't want to screw up whatever it is that you've been tasked to manage. You have other people within the elite who don't like you, who might be complaining about you and want to take your power. And then you have the top leader. And both Mao and Lin Deng were mercurial, suspicious, distant. They weren't always involved in the day to day. And so when they decided that they wanted to be, it could be very sudden. And so Xi Zhongshun was someone who had his own shifting inclinations. But the more important story for him was to the extent that he had those views, he also had to get a sense of what the winds were within the party center and what people like Mao and Deng were thinking to figure out what was possible and how to maneuver within that kind of struct situation. And so what we saw repeatedly throughout party history and even today is that even very experienced individuals read their situation wrong. Which is why we continuously see over and over within the Chinese Communist Party these rolling purges.
- [14:34]
Nicholas Gordon
Right. I mean, it seems like, and I know it's so it seems somewhat dismissive to say that everyone's kind of writing letters and writing memos back and forth and. But it seems like everyone is constantly engaged in memos and writing letters and engaging in self criticism and all of this stuff. Like there's so much of it as you go through, like the whole book.
- [14:52]
Joseph Turing Yin
Yeah. So I think that when you are in these positions, you are constantly trying to get a read on other people. And another problem is that you aren't quite sure what the top leader wants, but you're also not quite sure what other people within the elite are thinking either. And so Zhao Ziyang, who was both premier and General secretary in the 1980s, when he was having these conversations about political reform, one of the things he said was that in our politics, you have people say something to your face and then something completely different behind your back. And so when you're writing these kinds of documents, you really need to weigh the language that you use, because you don't want to be. You don't want someone else to use something that you put wrong as a weapon against you.
- [15:40]
Nicholas Gordon
So why don't we kind of start with kind of one of the first. Well, the first big incidents that I think almost ensnares Xi, which is. Which is the Gao gang incident, which actually I don't know that much about. So you could talk a little bit about what actually that was and how that almost ensnared C. That would like. That'd be great to hear.
- [16:03]
Joseph Turing Yin
Yeah. So this also touches upon some of the themes that we've already talked about, especially the problem of leader deputy relations. And so Gao Gung was also from the northwest. And in the early years of the People's Republic of China, Mao wasn't quite sure just how quickly China was going to pursue socialist transformation. And when the communists were still fighting the civil war, they described their intentions as more gradual. But Mao changed his mind. And his second in command, this individual named Liu Shaoqi, wasn't quick on the uptake, even though Gao Gong was. And that really impressed Mao. And Liu Shaqi wasn't someone who had a systematically different view than Mao. It wasn't as story of these coherent ideological platforms competing with each other. In fact, just a couple years before that, there had been fights within the party over land reform. And Liu Shaoqi had been very radical and very leftist. And Xi Zhongshun had been one of the people that Mao used to convince Liu Shaoqi that land reform had gone too far. But in any case, what you had in the early 1950s was a situation where Mao felt that Gao Gong was better at intuiting what he wanted and Gao had his own personal motivations. So Gao was someone who came up through the base areas, the so called red areas. But in his mind, Liu Shaoqi was someone who was a white area cater, meaning someone who primarily did underground work within the cities. And Gao didn't think that these white area caters had done much to contribute to the revolution. So he had his own sort of historical antagonisms against Liu Shaoqi. But Gao went too far in his Machinations. And a man named Deng Xiaoping complained about it and sort of forced Mao's hand. And Mao decided to give up on Gao gang. And Xi Zhongxun had encouraged Gao to be more careful, which is interesting because it says something about Xi Zhongxin's personality. But when Gao Gong was purged, even though Xi thought that Gao had sort of brought this down on himself, he was still very upset about the way Gao was treated, because Gao was persecuted in extraordinary ways. And in fact, it was so bad that Gao ultimately killed himself. And that weighed very strongly on Xi Zhongshun. But also, Xi understood that because he was closely tied to Gao by these career ties, that he was also very vulnerable, and he could have gone down with him. And the fact that he survived, I think, was a chastening moment for him.
- [18:40]
Nicholas Gordon
So how does she eventually get purged? What's the thing that crosses the line for the authorities in charge in terms of what he was doing?
- [18:51]
Joseph Turing Yin
Like, so there's a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is that it had something to do with a novel. Right? And so this other leader of the base camps in Shanxi, a man named Liu Zhidong, he had been a mentor to Xi Zhongshen, but he was killed fighting in the 1930s. And this woman who was married to the. The brother of Liu Zhidan, really wants to write a book about Liu. And at first, Xi Zhongshen is very skeptical. He doesn't think it's a good idea. He knows how explosive Party history can be. But after a lot of pressure, both from her and other revolutionaries from Shanxi, he finally relents. And when this book appears, it's interpreted as a manifestation of class struggle within the Party, and Xi Zhengxun is blamed for it. And so there's a long answer to why it was interpreted in that particular way. Part of the problem here had to do with different views on Party history. So there was one other figure from the Northwest who believed that this novel was a way of trying to reverse the verdict on Galgong. So he was the person who first complained about it. But then when it was brought to Mao's attention, Mao decided that there was that the fact that this book appeared at a particular time either was a broader manifestation of class struggle, or he decided to claim that it was another manifestation of class struggle to make a point that he wanted to make. And this was when Mao made one of his more famous aphorisms that isn't it interesting that people are using novels to engage In Counter Revolution, it's this new invention that he said. And so 16 years of political wilderness. It was the punishment that Xi Zhongshun received because of this misstep. But it also speaks to what I was saying before, which is that even very, very small missteps can have huge implications for these people. And so Xi Zhongsheng was shocked about just how tough the response was to his role in the creation of this.
- [20:57]
Nicholas Gordon
Novel, I will say, because this stuff pops up a couple times. I think it's another instance later in his life where there's a film or something that people get very mad about. And I guess it's just.
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Joseph Turing Yin
Just.
- [21:08]
Nicholas Gordon
I mean, clearly. Clearly there was censorship, and this stuff all had to be approved. But it also seemed like the census would say something and the writer will go, I'm just not listening to you. And then it would cause these problems for everybody. But it just. I didn't. I didn't quite. I didn't quite, I guess, latch onto that, like, the actual mechanisms of how. Of how this culture and this and the censorship really worked.
- [21:29]
Joseph Turing Yin
Yeah. So Zhou Yang, who was sort of cultural czar for the Party for many decades, has this really powerful quote. It's something like a culture is the barometer for class struggle. And it's true. And in a way, the Leo Jordan novel incident was a precursor to the Cultural Revolution. And after the Cultural Revolution, the first big warning that another Cultural Revolution might come was related to a movie, another cultural product. And so a little bit of background here. In the Beginning of the 1980s, Xi Zhongshun is brought from Guangdong to work on the Party Secretariat. He's the right hand man to Hu Yaobang, the general secretary. And as soon as he arrives, there is this campaign that is so radical that people are afraid that another Cultural Revolution is coming. And the target of this campaign is this movie called Bitter Love. And it includes this line from a daughter to her father who was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. The Party. You were always loyal to the nation, but was the nation always loyal to you? And it would have been a good question to ask Xi Zhongshun, who had always been loyal to the Party, but the Party had betrayed him in this spectacular way. And in one sense, he was asked this question because he was put in charge with the Party coming up with the official verdict on this movie. And his response to it shows that there aren't good answers to how you deal with this kind of problem, because he didn't want to see negative cultural products, but he also didn't want to see attacks on them to go so far that it raised questions about whether reform and opening was in trouble or whether another cultural revolution was happening. And so after he works on it for a little while, he says, I'm not going to deal with this anymore. I wash my hands of it.
- [23:24]
Nicholas Gordon
So good, so good, so good.
- [23:26]
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Joseph Turing Yin
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With that extra 5% off when I.
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Joseph Turing Yin
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Nicholas Gordon
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- [25:25]
Nicholas Gordon
Well, we've jumped ahead a bit. Let's just go back. So she sent Political Wilderness. He goes works in a factory for a while. Then the Cultural Revolution happens, which obviously he is then taken into custody by the Red Guards and other various groups. What is Xi's experience like during the Cultural Revolution?
- [25:48]
Joseph Turing Yin
So what's interesting about Xi Zhongshun is that he's purged several years before most of the rest of the leadership. And so when the Cultural Revolution starts, he's already spent time incarcerated at the Party School. He's already been exiled to work at a factory in Hunan. And then when the Cultural Revolution first starts, we see him expressing enthusiasm. But then slowly, he comes to understand just what a disaster it is. And it's disastrous not just for the country, but for him and his family in particular. At one point, while he's working at this factory, these Red Guards from Shanxi show up in the middle of the night at his dormitory and put a mask on his face, put him on a train and drag him to Xi', an, where they incarcerate him at the university and only let him out to go to struggle sessions. He's finally then put into solitary confinement within Xi', an, although he's let out still to go to these struggle sessions that are still continuing. And then he's sent to Beijing, where he's incarcerated there. And it's such a long period of time that he doesn't see his family, that when he's finally reunited with them, that he can't distinguish between his two sons, Xi Jinping and Xi Jinping's younger brother. And he's not released from confinement until 1975. He goes back to another province in Henan and spends another three years there. One of his daughters is persecuted to death during the Cultural Revolution, and the other children, many of them are exiled to the countryside. And his wife also is Xi Jinping's wife. Xi Jinping's mother is subjected to a great deal of emotional and physical punishment at the Party school. And then after she's. She too is exiled to an institution in the countryside as well.
- [27:46]
Nicholas Gordon
So she eventually makes his way back into government. You know, he's brought back and he's put in charge of Guangdong. But. But how, exactly. How exactly, like, was he brought back? Like. Like. What was the mechanism through which. Like, after the Cultural Revolution, how was he rehabilitated and then put in charge of. Of. Of Guangdong Province?
- [28:05]
Joseph Turing Yin
So there are some puzzles here that I wasn't able to resolve. He wasn't sure at first what he was going to do. There were several options. But he is sent to Guangdong, and the people who sent him there include Hua Guofeng. And that's important because Hua, of course, was Mao's initial successor, and many people saw him as basically a Maoist, someone who didn't want to rehabilitate the old guard. But Xi Zhongsun is one example among many of people that Hua Guofeng wanted to work with. And there's also a figure named Ye Jianing who played a very serious role. So Ye at the time was in the military apparatus. He had helped Hua Guofeng arrest the Gang of Four and was one of the most powerful people in the country at the time. And he was from Guangdong, and Guangdong was seen as sort of his bailiwick. And what's curious here is that Ye Jianing and Xi Zhongshun didn't really have any historical ties. So there are questions about why Ye selected Xi. I think one possibility is that there is the sense that perhaps Xi had seen just how bad the Cultural Revolution was and that he was practical and pragmatic and had done a lot of work with sort of concrete affairs. But I think also is what might have been going on here is that Xi Zhongshen had a lot of seniority and status within the party. He had been a vice premier. That's a very, very, very serious position. And Guangdong was seen as a particularly disastrous area after the Cultural Revolution. And so to send someone like Xi Zhongshun with that kind of precision status, I think might have been Ye's way of sending someone who shared his mission, but also would be able to have the forcefulness to deal with the sheer extent of the problems they were facing there.
- [30:01]
Nicholas Gordon
So obviously, I mean, Guangdong then becomes the center for a lot of this kind of reform and opening stuff, the special economic zones. She goes to the border with Hong Kong and sees everyone trying to flee the border and is trying to think of. Think through these issues. How key is Xi to the story of China's reform and opening, particularly in the south?
- [30:27]
Joseph Turing Yin
So it's undeniable that he deserves credit for playing a significant role in the creation of the Special economic zones. But we should remember that by the time he left, the SEZs were not what they are today. And although he deserves credit for helping create them, it was really his successor that was the one who turned them into the triumph that we think of them as. He also was skeptical about the household responsibility system. And so that, of course, is the term that's used to describe the greater rights that were given to peasants after Mao's death. And that was a huge, huge, huge victory for the party. And she, however, believed that the collective organization of agriculture was the right way to go. And so it shows that this idea we often have in our heads about reformers versus conservatives, good guys versus bad guys within the party, doesn't always fully grasp just the intricacies and the inconsistencies of these views of people. And so Xi Zhongshun was associated with the reformist faction. But the fact that he was skeptical about one of the defining features of China's reform and opening the household responsibility system shows just how complicated these people were.
- [31:52]
Nicholas Gordon
And then finally, I think the last kind of historical. Big historical event that's discussed in Your book is 1989, and around the kind of Tiananmen protests and the buildup to those protests. And there was a lot of. And say, there's actually a lot of internal debate about what to do, what was kind of Xi's position in as far as we can tell.
- [32:17]
Joseph Turing Yin
So for much of the 1980s, Xi Zhongshun is working on the secretariat for Hu Yaobang. And when Hu Yaobang is purged in 1987, Xi is distressed. He thinks that the accusations against him are totally ridiculous. And at these meetings, in subtle ways, Xi Zhongshen expresses disagreements, pleasure, but he essentially accepts Deng Xiaoping's decision, puts the party's interests first. And when he takes a trip to the south, shortly after, he talks about how terrible Hu Yaobang was, Even though we know that this was not what he really believed. But because Xi Zhongshun had been so closely associated with Hu Yaobang, he also, I'm sure, must have felt political vulnerability. He needed to criticize Hu Yaobang precisely because he was so close to him. And then it's the death of hu Yaobang in 1989, a death that's almost certainly related to the stress and anxiety of the purge and his continued worries that something even worse was coming for him. Xi Zhongshun was emotionally very, very, very distraught. And at this time, he's no longer on the secretariat. His last formal position is first vice chairman of the National People's Congress. And that is very significant, because the last, best hope for a peaceful solution, both among the leadership and among the students, is an emergency session of the National People's Congress. And for most of those fateful weeks, the head of the npc, a man named Wan Li, is in Canada or the United States, which means that the highest ranking figure of the Chinese legislature during the Tiananmen Square protests is Xi Zhongsheng. And we can tell that he. He was distraught. We have quite powerful evidence that shows that he also seems to have been involved in these conversations about whether the NPC could meet and have some kind of a discussion with the students or pass bills that would meet what the students were demanding and that would somehow resolve the situation. But ultimately, after pressure from other senior revolutionaries. Multiple conversations. Even before the crackdown, Xi Zhongsheng comes out in support of martial law. But as the troops are moving in in the last hours of June 3rd and the early hours of June 4th, people are still protesting because they were still hoping against hope that there would still somehow be an NPC meeting. And 700 to 800 of them were killed in that onslaught. In 1990, there is a meeting of the National People's Congress where Xi Zhongshun has what appears to have been some kind of a mental health episode. He screams at the premier, a man named Li Peng. He then rants and raves about what had happened to him during the 1930s when he was arrested by his own party. That's something that we haven't talked about yet. Then he spends the night on the couch of his office, spends some time in a hospital, and then he goes to Guangdong and. And spends most of the rest of his life there.
- [35:32]
Nicholas Gordon
Maybe you could say a little bit about that, but was arrested by his own party in 1930. We did kind of jump over that. There's a lot in this book, so it's hard to. It's easy to miss stuff. But could you just talk a little bit about that episode right at the beginning, in the 30s?
- [35:46]
Joseph Turing Yin
So Xi Zhongshen and these other revolutionaries are trying to move gradually to expand the party's power between the cities. And then you have these communists show up who have only read about communism in books, don't have a lot of practical experience, who think that this caution is a manifestation of an ideological problem, that they are essentially rightists or mountaintopists, meaning that they're sitting on top of mountains and they're not engaging in revolution. There's also a story of political ambition here. But whatever the reason, ultimately Xi Zhongsheng, Liu Zhudan, and Gao Gong are all detained by their fellow communists. And until the end of his life, Xi Zhongsheng claims that they were planning to bury him alive. And they were not released until shortly after the arrival of Mao Zedong and the rest of the central leadership at the end of the Long March.
- [36:48]
Nicholas Gordon
You've hinted at this kind of at several points in this conversation. That comes up a lot in your book. But she has been purged, or has come close to being purged several times in his career. He's been rehabilitated several times in his career. Yet overall, I mean, he basically stuck with them the entire time. And I'm not saying that he would have, like, you know, changed size or Anything but. Like, it's not like he just gave up and was like, I'm done. Like, I'm just not doing this anymore. Anymore. I mean, do you have any sense as to why he kind of stuck with it, despite the constant purges he went through?
- [37:27]
Joseph Turing Yin
In my book, we see Communism as a source of meaning and purpose for people who had seen China face the risk of completely being divided by the imperialist powers and had collapsed under the weight of feudalism. And for them, communism was the only way out of this crisis. It was the only way to save China, to help China achieve the rejuvenation that they all believe that their nation deserved. There was this idea that only by creating a disciplined, cohesive weapon, in the sense of the Party was the way out. And so if that is your view, that the Party's mission is a historical inevitability, that when the Party tells you that you are wrong, you have to admit that you are wrong, because otherwise that means rejecting the Party, which is the source of meaning and purpose in your life, right? And so for them, I think there was also this idea that there was nothing else outside the Party, right? That if you think about what the other option was, turning against the Party, that wouldn't just mean rejecting yourself, it would also mean hurting the people around you. It would also mean even an even more severe case of emotional and physical punishment. And so this also, I think, gets to this sort of theme that we see often in people who are communist writers that inspired not just Xi Zhongshun, but also Xi Jinping. In these novels, we see characters who do things like lay on a bed of nails to inculcate their revolutionary zeal. And so there's this idea that suffering is a redemptive enterprise, that forging is something that doesn't just reveal your mettle but also strengthens it. That for people like Xi Zhongshun, when people would complain to him about the Party, he would be able to manipulate this politics of suffering and say, well, I bet you didn't go through this, which is what I went through as a way of saying, I'm sticking with it, so you should too, when you have even less reason to complain than I do. And I think that this. It's both an emotional frame, it's also just a utilitarian frame of getting over things and putting the big picture first. And. And I think for Xi Jinping, he likely feels that the wager was the right one. When he's sitting on Tiananmen Square a few weeks ago for the anniversary of the defeat of Japan and looking and seeing all that China had achieved, I think he probably feels pride. And, of course, that has meant a great deal of suffering for the Chinese people. But I think that's how Xi Jinping probably thinks about it.
- [40:28]
Nicholas Gordon
So before I kind of get my. In my last question, I want to talk actually about. About sources in the PO and the. And how you wrote this book. I mean, there. There's a lot in this book. It covers a lot of history. What are the kinds of sources that. That. That you could rely on for this?
- [40:48]
Joseph Turing Yin
So, for reasons that I explained in my last answer, Xi Jinping believes that for the Party to thrive, people have to have a sense of conviction in its historical mission, that you can admit that the Party made mistakes, but you can't overstate what the Party has done wrong in the past in Xi Jinping's mind, because then you won't be able to rightfully demand the kind of sacrifices that Xi Jinping believes that even now, people in the Party should be willing to make. And also, as I described in an earlier answer, this is a very opaque system in which even people at the very top have a very hazy idea of what's going on. And so studying China, it's not as easy as just going to a handful of archives and collecting the relevant material and writing off what you find. You need to have, I think, a sensitivity of possibilities and not limitations. And once you do that, and you recognize that the evidence isn't perfect, but there's still a lot of it, then you can be creative about how you find sources and then being judicious about how you put them all together to create a picture that isn't perfect, but that, over time, hopefully will get better and better as more and more evidence comes to light. And so what are some of these pieces of evidence? Well, actually, there are a lot of archives and internally circulated materials that are available within the United States. They've gotten to American libraries one way or another. We even have the diaries of a man named Lee Ray, who is a leading figure for many years, that's available at the Hoover Archive. Lee even knew the Xi family quite well. Then, of course, we have all of this stuff that was published in Hong Kong and Taiwan outside of mainland censorship. Those are document collections, but also histories and memoirs. And even within the Mainland, you not only had Party history journals that were pushing the envelope and including really quite explosive stuff on everything from June 4th to the cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, but you also have these official Party materials and people who aren't familiar with them might think that they're just useless. But at the very least, what you can do is use them to sensitize yourself to possibilities, and then you go and chase those other directions. But also, I think these materials tend to mislead for what they don't include. Not that they make things up, although they certainly do that in some cases. Cases. But what that means is often what you'll be able to do is take a piece of evidence from one of those materials and then put it into the broader context of a whole lot of other stuff that you collected, and then suddenly it's meaningful in ways that you wouldn't be able to understand if you only looked at those materials. And the last thing I'll say is I also made a list of every time Xi Zhongxun met with a foreigner, and then I went to their archives or I interviewed those people. So I spoke to the Dalai Lama, I went to the American Archives, British Archives, Russian Archives, French Communist Party archives, Italian Communist Party archives. And then by doing this, you hopefully will be able to approximate what his life was like in a way that, while not perfect, is meaningful for people as they think about what the significance of his life is and for how they think about China.
- [44:14]
Nicholas Gordon
So I think for my last question, know, Xi's life basically covers the entirety of, like, contemporary Chinese history. You know, it covers the immediate post 1911 period, the Second World War, the Chinese Civil War, greatly forward Cultural Revolution, Chinese reform and opening, which is basically, I mean, if you think about it like from when he started his revolutionary activities right through to, I think, when he, when he, when he passes away, like so much happens in China during that time and arguably sets China up to be kind of the, the, the economic, and the economic power it is today. And it doesn't quite get there by the time he passes away, but at least it's kind of starting to make moves towards that. You know, like, what do you think Xi's life in the end, kind of tells us about China's own history kind of during these, these many decades of history.
- [45:09]
Joseph Turing Yin
So there's lots of different ways to come at that question, but I think that one theme that comes out is how the Party has thought about the question of political order in the sense of how they keep the Party in power both while they're alive, but also generations into the future. And Xi Jinping is someone who clearly sees himself as a man of destiny, the latest man in charge of protect 5,000 years of Chinese history, and who I think Xi Jinping believes that his, his goal should be to help China return to the status of wealth and power that he believes was stolen away from it during the 19th century. And so he really hopes to ensure that the person who comes after him within the leadership, leadership has the same views. And it's very hard for him and for any authoritarian leader to make sure that the person that they pick will continue to do that. And we're not exactly sure how Xi Jinping is going to resolve this dilemma, but it's a potential source of insecurity for the regime. And then there isn't just a question of succession at the top, but also succession at the bottom. China's young people, how you win over a new generation to the Party's cause. And Xi Jinping has described the third and fourth generation, meaning China's current young people, as the moment of maximum vulnerability, that it's the west who wants to win them over and that the Party needs to think about how to inoculate them. And his answer is to use party history as moral education to inspire them. And that's why I think that it's useful to go back and look and see what that history is. And that's one of the things I tried to do with my book.
- [47:07]
Nicholas Gordon
So I think with that, that's a great place to end. Our conversation with Joseph Turgean, author of the Party's Interests Come first the Life of Xi Zhongshun, Father of Xi Jinping. Joseph, I actually have two final questions for you which are where can people find your work? Not just this book, but all of your work and what's next for you? What do you think the next project.
- [47:28]
Joseph Turing Yin
Might be so they can follow me on social media? I'm on both Twitter and Bluesky. I also have a personal website, JosephTeregian.com and the next very long term project should don't hold you'd breath is looking like a history of China's nuclear and missile programs during the Cultural Revolution.
- [47:47]
Nicholas Gordon
So you can follow me, Nicholas Gordon on Twitter Nick R I Gordon. That's N I C K R I G O R D1. You can go to AsiaViewBooks.com to find other reviews, essays, interviews and excerpts. Follow them on Twitter at Book Reviews Asia that's reviews plural and you can find many more author reviews at the New books network@newbooks.work.com we're online for your podcast apps Apple Podcasts Spotify Rate us, recommend us share us through friends supports interviewing those running in around and about Asia. Stay tuned for more news and who's coming up on the show. But before then. Joseph, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
- [48:17]
Joseph Turing Yin
Thank you for having me.