Hi, I'm Joe Wiley. And I'm Soie Ball. And we're here to tell you about a brand new podcast, Digit.

Digit is all about the things that Joe and I love. From the kids to the parents and all the stuff in between.

There's a lot going on when you get to this age. Listen wherever you get your podcasts and watch every episode on Spotify. Dig it. Every week. Every week.

For the rest of time. Yes. Okay. Good.

I'm John Batchel with Joseph Tariggy and the author of the new book, The Party's Interest Come First.

I highly recommend it to those of us who have to make generalities about China because

this makes it a family affair. You pay attention to what Xi Jinping learned as a child,

as a young man, as a success. And the success comes almost in Shakespearean fashion within moments of the death of the father.

In 1999, the father returns. Deng Xiaoping is dead so he can come back to the capital.

Cancer is discovered, I believe, in 2001, and in 2002 the father dies of cancer.

Is she at his deathbed or was he busy at the top?

I don't remember.

Was he in America?

Where was Xi Jinping's son?

Xi Jinping was in one of the southern provinces.

Right.

And Xi Jinping has spent his last weeks in Beijing.

He had moved back there when they discovered the cancer in his body for treatment.

It was a very sudden death.

The family was quite shocked by how quickly it happened.

This is a very senior figure with an institutional memory,

having been through all sorts of blows to his family, to himself, to having to recant things that he knew were true.

...