The Party's Interests Come First

Xi Jinping, China's current leader, is one of the world's most powerful individuals, but also one of the least understood. We do know, however, that the memory and legacy of his father, the revolutionary Xi Zhongxun, deeply influenced Xi Jinping, and that the elder Xi played significant roles in key moments in the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC). An important revolutionary in his own right, Xi Zhongxun (1913-2002) became a senior official in the founding generation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and official party narratives celebrate him as "an outstanding proletarian revolutionary."


The Party's Interests Come First is the first biography of Xi Zhongxun, Xi Jinping's father, in English. Using extensive collections of newly available materials, uncensored archival sources, interviews with party historians, diaries, and periodicals, Torigian challenges common viewpoints about the nature of politics in the PRC, contending that Xi Zhongxun's life is at heart a story about the politically explosive nature of competing versions of CCP history. This biography is at once a sweeping story of the Chinese revolution and the first several decades of the PRC, and also a deeply personal story about making sense of one's own identity within a larger political narrative.