This is John Batchel, conversation with the author Joseph Tarigian of Stanford University. His new book,

The Party's Interest Come First, is the biography of Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhang Shun, a revolutionary

joining the party in 26 and weathering the years of decades of deprivation and violence, leading to

Mao's-led revolution in 47, 48, and 49. And then the bad patch from 56, 57, 57,

on.

This particular remark is Joseph describing how it is that Mao twisted and reorganized Leninist-Marxist thought to suit himself in China at the same time.

She admired this, but greatly forward. Here Joseph explains. More of this later tonight and next week. So Mao's Dong's story that he told about why he deserved to be

the leader of the Chinese Communist Party is that he cynicized Marxism.

Well, what does that mean? Well, it means that in his view, you had these people who were

trained in Moscow or were obeying orders from the Soviet Union who simply didn't understand

what was going on in China. But that Mao, his contribution, was to take the ideas of Marx and Lenin and

apply them to China. And so that means a lot of flexibility because when you get to change

things to fit your own situation, then you get to say essentially that it means whatever you want it to mean.

So the ideology was important, right?

Because you needed to tell people what they believed in and you needed to legitimate this

violence and this revolution.

But for Mao and one of the reasons that she respected Mao so much,

you really also needed to have this practical side. But then, as you said, in the 1950s,

for the greatly forward, they decided to leave the Soviet model. They thought that the Soviets

had become revisionist, that they weren't really communist anymore. And that tragically led to the

deaths of about 30 million Chinese citizens.