This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchelor.

Chez-Jen-Peg, much in the news,

the General Secretary of the People's Republic of China

for an unprecedented third term in the 21st century.

We travel now to the 20th century, very early in the second

decade, thanks to Joseph Tarigian. His new book, The Party Interest Come First, is a biography of

Xi Jinping's father, a profile of his family, and a glimpse through the eyes of the protagonist, Xi Jong-shun,

of the transformation of China into the success today, except the unknowns are very large,

and Joseph helps me understand some of them.

Joseph, a very good evening, too.

You are an associate professor at the School of International Service at the American University, and you published a book that is overwhelming to me, a first-time reader of

Chinese communist history. I congratulate you

and look immediately to understand this without any Freudianism. I'm not projecting here,

but fathers and sons. In the West, we regard this as a profound relationship that explains a deal. Hence, we have

dramas that talk about edible complexes or not. Do they have the same thinking in China about fathers

and sons? Good evening to you, Joseph. Thank you so much for having me. There is a famous aphorism in Chinese that says,

if there is a son like that, then he must have had a father like this. So there is a similar

view in China that you can learn a lot from the father about the son. And of course,

it's a Confucian society in which the father plays a crucial

role in the family. So I don't want to project too much, but wow, the drama here. Let's begin.

1913, our protagonist, whose name is Zhang Shun, first name, Xi, is born into what he describes himself as a poor peasant family in shanshi province what does that look like in 1913

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