This is John Batchel, conversation with the author Joseph Tarigian.

His new book, The Party's Interest Come First, is the biography of Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhongshan,

a man who joined the Communist Party in 26 and fought the battles of the 30s, the 40s.

In the 50s, he was a high party official,

and then he was purged and brutalized and humiliated and jailed

and missed his family many years.

And yet, he did not push back.

He begged for forgiveness.

He confessed something that didn't exist. He'd never been

anti-party. He'd never been engaged in rightist deviation or leftist deviation. It was all quite

fantastic. And speaking to Joseph about this, I said, I thought of Arthur Kessler's darkness at noon,

a work of fiction written by a man who knew about the persecution of the Stalinist trials in the 1930s,

and how bold party leaders who were purged by Stalin would not push back,

would accept the verdict of the show trial.

And why?

Given that they'd been betrayed by their own comrades,

Joseph explains that he thought about that book too

when he came to this part of Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhongshan.

And there is no easy way to explain other than the way Joseph does.

They were loyal to the party, and therefore much more of this coming in the coming weeks.

This is Joseph Tarigian.

The book is The Party's interests come first.

...