Friday Reflection: Like Father, Like Son?
Joseph Torigian on the politics of Communist China, Xi Zhongzun, and his son Xi Jinping
Throughlines
The conversation opens with Joseph Torigian explaining why Xi Zhongxun is worth studying in his own right, apart from his more famous son. Xi Zhongxun was a “red aristocrat” whose life spanned the full arc of the Chinese Communist revolution, from underground struggle to the reform era. Torigian emphasizes that Xi Zhongxun was neither a marginal figure nor a consistent winner: his career was marked by both proximity to power and long periods of disgrace.
Zambone and Torigian then turn to Xi Zhongxun’s early revolutionary years. As a teenager, Xi joined underground Communist activity in Shaanxi and was quickly radicalized. Torigian discusses Xi’s early embrace of violence and discipline, and the formative experience of operating in an environment where secrecy, obedience, and ideological conformity were matters of survival rather than abstraction.
The discussion moves to Xi Zhongxun’s career from the 1930s to the 1990s. Torigian explains Xi’s close if uneasy working relationships with senior leaders such as Zhou Enlai and later in the 1980s Hu Yaobang. Xi had a role in sensitive administrative areas, including United Front work and religious policy. This includes negotiations with Tibetan leaders, where Xi demonstrated flexibility and personal diplomacy within strict ideological limits.
A major portion of the conversation focuses on Xi Zhongxun’s repeated political purges. Beginning in the early 1960s and extending through the Cultural Revolution, Xi was removed from power, placed under surveillance, subjected to internal exile, and prevented from having political power for sixteen years at a time. Torigian emphasizes that these punishments were not aberrations but routine mechanisms of Party governance.
The conversation then turns to the reform era of the 1980s. Xi Zhongxun returned to public life and supported reformist figures, particularly Hu Yaobang. When Hu was purged, however, Xi avoided being purged or punished yet again. Torigian believes that Xi’s reformism was genuine but limited: he supported institutional correction, not political pluralism or challenges to Party supremacy.
Finally, you and Torigian address the question of Xi Jinping. Torigian cautions against simplistic psychological readings but argues that Xi Zhongxun’s experiences shaped the political environment in which his son matured. The elder Xi’s endurance, discipline, and acceptance of suffering as normal political currency form an essential background for understanding the younger Xi’s approach to power, loyalty, and control.
Questions for Reflection and Discussion
1. What kind of revolutionary was Xi Zhongxun? How did his early commitment to the Communist revolution shape his understanding of loyalty, discipline, and sacrifice?
2. How should we understand Xi Zhongxun’s repeated persecution by the Party? What does his experience reveal about how the CCP treats even its most faithful servants?
3. Why did Xi Zhongxun remain devoted to the Party despite years of imprisonment and exile? What explanations does Torigian offer, and which do you find most convincing?
4. What does Xi Zhongxun’s career suggest about the moral psychology of Communist officials? Is it possible to distinguish between personal virtue and institutional cruelty in his life?
5. How did Xi Zhongxun’s relationships with figures like Zhou Enlai, Hu Yaobang, and Deng Xiaoping shape his political outlook? What do these alliances tell us about power and survival within the CCP?
6. In what ways was Xi Zhongxun both a reformer and a system-loyalist? How does this tension complicate common narratives about “reform” in post-Mao China?
7. How might Xi Zhongxun’s experiences have shaped Xi Jinping’s worldview? What lessons about authority, loyalty, and vulnerability might a son absorb from such a father?
8. What does this biography suggest about the nature of political inheritance in totalitarian and authoritarian systems? Is political legacy passed down through ideology, trauma, example—or something else?
9. How does studying Xi Zhongxun help us understand contemporary Chinese politics? What continuities between Mao-era governance and today’s China become clearer through his life?
10. What are the limits of biography as a tool for understanding political power Where does focusing on one life illuminate the system—and where might it obscure it?
For Further Investigation
Joseph Torigian, The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping (Stanford University Press, 2025)
—, Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion (Yale University Press, 2022)
Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Harvard University Press, 2011)
Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2006)
Frederick Teiwes, Politics and Purges in China: Rectification and the Decline of Party Norms, 1950-65 (M.E. Sharpe, 1979)
Frederick Teiwes and Warren Sun, The End of the Maoist Era: Chinese Politics During the Twilight of the Cultural Revolution, 1972-1976 (Routledge, 2008)
Xiaoyuan Lu, To the End of Revolution: The Chinese Communist Party and Tibet, 1949–1959 (Columbia University Press, 2020)
Odd Arne Westad, Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750 (Basic Books, 2012)
Related Episodes
How to Win a Power Struggle—Joseph Torigian’s first appearance on the podcast
From Rebel to Ruler—Anthony Saich on one hundred years of the Chinese Communist Party
Accidental Tyrant—Fyodor Tertitskiy on the career of Kim Il-Sung
Blood Letters—Xi Lian on Lin Zhao, a political prisoner who came to very different conclusions than Xi Zhongxun