We are very excited to announce that Joseph Torigian, associate professor at American University in D.C. and currently working as a research fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, will be joining us on 13 October to talk about his new book: The Party’s Interests Come First – The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping. This is the first biography of Xi Zhongxun ever written in English— a sweeping account of the Chinese revolution and the early decades of the People’s Republic of China, as well as a deeply personal exploration of identity within a larger political context. Drawing on an array 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 own feelings with the Party’s demands. Through the eyes of Xi Jinping’s father, Torigian reveals the extraordinary organizational, ideological, and coercive power of the CCP—and the terrible cost in human suffering that comes with it.