The Party's Interests Come First

ASERI is pleased to present the volume

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

by Joseph Torigian
Stanford University press

Monday 27 October 2025, 3.00 p.m.
in ASERI (Via San Vittore 18)

EVENT IN ENGLISH

Introduces:
Damiano Palano, Director of ASERI

Speakers:

Joseph Torigian, Associate Professor, American University's School of International Service and Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations

Mireno Berrettini, Professor of History of International Relations, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart

Chiara Piccinini, Researcher in Chinese Languages and Literatures, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart
 

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is one of the most powerful people in the world, but also one of the least understood. However, from the memoirs and legacy of his father, revolutionary Xi Zhongxun (1913-2002), much can be learned about both Xi Jinping and the nature of the party he leads. Xi senior served the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for over seventy years. He has worked alongside prominent leaders such as Zhou Enlai and Hu Yaobang. He helped build the communist base that saved Mao Zedong in 1935 and initiated the Special Economic Zones that launched China into the era of reform after Mao's death. He led the efforts of the Party's United Front towards Tibetans, Uyghurs and Taiwanese. And, although in 1989 he initially tried to avoid violence, he eventually supported the Party's crackdown on Tiananmen protesters.

The Party's Interests Come First is the first biography of Xi Zhongxun written in English. This biography is at once a comprehensive history of the Chinese Revolution and the first decades of the People's Republic of China, and a deeply personal story about the meaning of one's identity within a larger political context. Drawing on a series 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 feelings with the Party's demands. Through the eyes of Xi Jinping's father, Torigian reveals the CCP's extraordinary organizational, ideological, and coercive power and the terrible cost in terms of suffering 

The author:
Joseph Torigian is an associate professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, a senior member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and an associate member of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. Previously he was a researcher at Stanford's Hoover History Lab, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University's China in the World Program, a Stanton Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a post-doc at Princeton-Harvard's China and the World Program, a postdoctoral (and pre-doctoral) at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), pre-doctoral researcher at the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at George Washington University, IREX Fellow affiliated with the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and Fulbright Fellow at Fudan University in Shanghai. 

His first book, "Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao" was published by Yale University Press, while "The Party's Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping" was published by Stanford University Press in 2025.

Participation is free 

Info: info.aseri@unicatt.it