Joseph Torigian
@JosephTorigian
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Research Fellow at Stanford Hoover History Lab @HooverInst . Assistant Professor at @au_sis . Studies Chinese and Russian politics and foreign policy. 唐志学
Washington, DC
Joined November 2018
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Today is official release day for my book, "Prestige Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China After Stalin and Mao." Check out this flyer for a 30% discount.
@yalepress
@YaleBooks
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I’ve seen claims that Xi Jinping will be forced to take a hard line on Taiwan because of the political pressure of the upcoming Congress. Maybe. But Taiwan is a deeply emotional and personal issue for him too. (A thread).
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The Xi Jinping prequel saga just got closer to bookshelves. Today, I signed a contract with
@stanfordpress
to publish "The Party's Interests Come First," my biography of Xi Jinping's father Xi Zhongxun.
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A thread on the possible implications of the death of Li Keqiang.
The passing of a senior Chinese political figure can be a complicated and challenging moment for the leadership. Protests after the deaths of popular former deputies like Zhou Enlai and Hu Yaobang show why.
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A thread of reactions to Xi's speech.
The work report was unambiguously about continuity. I think I’ve read almost everything he said here somewhere else. Although historic, this Congress will almost certainly not signify fundamental new policy directions.
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Nobody on the outside really knows what happened with Hu Jintao. Everything is conjecture. But I have a few thoughts that might put the evidence we have in a context that hints it was not a "purge."
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Xi Jinping is an intensely difficult person to read, but one of the things I'm most confident about is he thought the Cultural Revolution was a total disaster. For Xi, the CR was somewhat like Putin's Dresden moment - a lesson in what people might do when government loses control
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As we begin to think about Jiang Zemin's legacy, I thought I'd share a few anecdotes about him that suggest a very complicated individual that does not sit comfortably on the "left" and "right" spectrum.
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Deeply grateful to His Holiness
@DalaiLama
for granting me an audience to ask some questions about his relationship with Xi Zhongxun, the father of Xi Jinping. Xi Zhongxun was deeply involved in Tibetan issues from 1949-1962 and again during the 1980s.
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The Li Zhanshu statement was seen as an escalation in PRC's support for Russia. The Xi-Putin meeting is now described as a big defeat for Moscow. I think both judgments are an exaggeration rooted in the tensions of what
@EvanFeigenbaum
calls the Beijing straddle. (thread)
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Big book news: you can now read my new
@yalepress
book on elite power struggles in China and the Soviet Union after Mao and Stalin on Kindle. The physical copy will be available on May 10.
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Here's some history on the relationship between Xi Zhongxun, the father of Xi Jinping, and Zhang Zongxun, the father of Zhang Youxia (thread)
In July 1945, KMT seized an area north of Xi'an. Zhang Zongxun and Xi Zhongxun were named as commander and commissar for counterattack.
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A few thoughts on the Chinese reaction to what’s happened over the last few days in Russia. (thread)
It will be hard to guess what Beijing really thinks. We know that historically the Russians have really cared about how they are depicted in the Chinese press.
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In 1989, one reason the protesting students were so upset by Hu Yaobang's death was a rumor had spread that Hu had died of a heart attack at a Politburo meeting because he was so upset. On April 18, Zhao Ziyang decided to publish an article about what really happened.
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My book "Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao" is now available for pre-order at
@yalepress
.
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Here is a picture of Zhang Gaoli meeting the parents of Xi Jinping (Xi Zhongxun and Qi Xin) as they get off a plane. From 1997 to 2001, Zhang was party boss of Shenzhen, where Xi Zhongxun was living at the time.
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This week I signed a contract with
@yalepress
for my book, "Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles after Stalin and Mao," which examines the succession struggles in the Soviet Union and China after the deaths of Stalin and Mao.
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My book has a cover. It's available for pre-order now and comes out in three months.
Delighted to share a second blurb for my book from David Holloway: "Joseph Torigian combines history and political science in a remarkably acute and innovative study of leadership politics in the Soviet Union and China. It will help us understand authoritarian regimes today."
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Some personal news: delighted to say that
@AU_SIS
just granted me tenure and promotion to associate professor! SIS has been an amazing home and it's a real honor. Thank you to everyone and especially Sarah Snyder,
@JimGoldgeier
and
@taylorlatam
for serving on my review committee
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Xi Jinping 25 years ago: "On February 28 of 50 years ago, the Taiwanese people in order to resist the fascist dictatorship of the KMT reactionary regime, pursue democracy, strive for freedom, and implement local self-governance executed the 2-28 uprising..."
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Biggest reaction to plenum readout: the goal is to a) establish Xi Jinping’s legitimacy and authority and b) make a convincing case for people to believe in the party’s historic mission. It is not a revisionist account and does not signify a more “ideological,” pro-Mao future.
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I couldn't find a copy for years, but with the help of the amazing
@FairbankCenter
Fung Librarian Nancy Hearst I was finally able to get my hands on Roderick MacFarquhar's legendary syllabus "Chinese Authors on Chinese Politics."
Here it is:
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Please check out my new piece for
@ForeignPolicy
on the Xi family and the legacy of Tiananmen
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Bao Tong, a close associate of Zhao Ziyang during the 1980s, has passed. Bao was incarcerated after the June 4 crackdown, and his interviews and writings have done more than perhaps anyone to illuminate the politics of that tragedy.
訃
先父鮑彤，慟於2022年11月9日7時08分安然離世。距生於1932年11月5日，享年90歲。
謹此訃
聞
子 鮑樸 女 鮑簡
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This is a disaster for people who study China
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In this
@WSJ
editorial, George Soros claims Xi Jinping "devoted his life to undoing Deng's influence" since he holds Deng "responsible for not honoring his father, Xi Zhongxun, and for removing the elder Xi from the Politburo in 1962." That's not quite right. (thread)
George Soros: “I consider Mr. Xi the most dangerous enemy of open societies in the world. The Chinese people as a whole are among his victims, but domestic political opponents and religious and ethnic minorities suffer from his persecution much more.”
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A little personal news: today I'm starting a year of leave from
@AU_SIS
to become a Research Fellow at the Hoover History Lab
@HooverInst
, where I'll finish up my biography of Xi Zhongxun and continue my work on nuclear weapons in China and the USSR during the Cold War
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Since the 20th Party Congress begins in ten days, I thought I would do a thread on the work I have done to date on Xi Jinping.
First, here is an article I did on how Xi Jinping's early years (1950s and 1960s) may have affected his worldview.
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Yan Mingfu, who translated for Mao Zedong and negotiated with student protestors, has died.
He deserves a thread - in part because of his relationship with with Xi Zhongxun, the father of Xi Jinping.
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An anonymous piece, “A Letter from a Foreign Correspondent,” has hit 100k plus views on WeChat (max displayable total). Important read about western journalism in China.
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Here's a list of digital databases for students doing research on history at home: FRUS, Digital National Security Archive, the FOIA sites of DOD, State, and CIA, CIA Crest, Declassified Documents Reference System, the Secretaries of Defense Historical Series (1)
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谢谢袁莉
@LiYuan6
邀请我上《不明白博客》
@bumingbaipod
讲党史！(Thank you Li Yuan for including me on your podcast to talk about party history!)
这一期看上去和时事有点距离，实际上是紧扣时事甚至中国政治未来走向的。唐志学
@JosephTorigian
谈了他为什么认为“派系”在中国政治中的作用被夸大了，为什么人们对华国锋、“四人帮”和邓小平的认知有误区，他是否同意“习近平已经基本消除邓小平的政治遗产”这一说法，以及习近平会终身执政。
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Never saw this picture of Hu Jintao before. In Tibet around time of March 1989 crackdown.
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When Xi Jinping met Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou in 2015, XJP related a story about how Angela Merkel told him Chinese should be more like Germans and give up lost territory to history. Xi told Ma his answer: we Chinese are not like you Germans.
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A bit of happy personal news: I was just given an
@AmericanU
Academic Achievement Award for Outstanding Performance or Innovation in Online Teaching
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Xu Qinxian, the commander of the 38th Group Army on the even of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown who did not bring his troops to Beijing and was punished for his behavior, has died. (thread)
原38軍軍長徐勤先將軍，因六四抗命被判有期徒刑5年，經楊白冰特批由軍隊看守所轉到秦城，獄號9004，與8901的鮑彤成為203樓的獄友，但是兩人自始至終沒有在秦城謀面。鮑彤單人關押在二層西筒，他與7705號的姚文元關在一樓同一筒子裡，都是單間，晚上可以一起看電視。徐將軍刑滿之後恢復軍職，降為河北省
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We know very, very little about the real situation at the apex of Chinese politics right now, but no power struggle I’ve ever studied in the PRC, USSR, or DPRK was ever sparked or resolved primarily by the content of foreign policy disputes in the elite.
8. The writer's boldest assertion: Xi has alienated other party leaders, and the US must exploit this. They argue if US imposes costs on Xi's actions, that strengthens the standing of anti-Xi officials. And US messaging should be about Xi, not the CCP and its 90 million members.
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For
@Diplomat_APAC
, using my own collection of internal sources, I write about how differently Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhongxun, managed affairs in Xinjiang
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Roderick Macfarquhar used to teach a class that was structured around books written by Chinese authors on PRC history. If I wrote a syllabus that took into account the new important work by Chinese scholars, here's what I would consider for the Cultural Revolution (thread).
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The Xi family was exceptionally close to Ulanhu and his family. In the 1950s, they were neighbors and became so close that, in 1961, Ulanhu invited Xi Jinping's parents to Hohhot to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
Bu comes from a prominent Mongol family. Her grandfather, Ulanhu, was founding chairman of Inner Mongolia autonomous region (thus his nickname Mongolian King) and vice president of China. While studying in Moscow, his classmates included Deng Xiaoping and Chiang Kai-shek’s son.
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But he has repeatedly said that he would not lose territory that his “forbears” left to the Chinese people. Whatever political pressures he may face, he does not want to go down in history as the person that let Taiwan move farther away from eventual reunification.
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The timing of Li’s death is not good for the leadership. Some people already think it was an assassination, while others will likely conclude that Li’s death was somehow related to disappointment with how Xi treated him or the general direction of the country.
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As I’ve argued elsewhere, foreign policy disputes don’t tend to spark or effect the outcomes of elite power struggles in Leninist regimes. (link)
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A thread on the upcoming new Politburo Standing Committees and Politburos.
Even after the lists are revealed, the implications will be ambiguous. If Xi Jinping picks people "close" to him, it suggests he can do what he wants, but that he can only trust certain people.
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I have a new longform article out today: "Xi Jinping and Ideology," published with the
@TheWilsonCenter
.
Here's a summary of the main points (thread).
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But that doesn’t mean Xi Jinping doesn’t care about Taiwan. Given the deep involvement of his father Xi Zhongxun in united front work over many decades, “unification” has always been both a national and family affair.
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Xi Jinping also certainly does not want to take steps that put PRC regime stability at risk, which is what a war without a guarantee of victory would do. He is too loyal and dedicated to the party as an organization to do something like that.
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Looks like the increasingly infamous new Putin campaign ad is a spoof. Originally from Youtube channel Маленький тлен
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The new history dec. is a doc that stresses continuity with the past and *past versions* of the past while simultaneously explaining why Xi Jinping is special. To achieve that balance, it claims XJP did what other people wanted but couldn’t: by achieving more party discipline.
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The Hu Jintao incident, which I think was wrongly interpreted, has already created a sense that Xi does not respect retired officials with status within the Party.
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Here's a picture of Xi Jinping and his father Xi Zhongxun with the 10th Panchen Lama and his family, sometime in the 1980s.
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Xi also does not show any new urgency on Taiwan. Peaceful reunification is “the best way to realize reunification” and “the wheels of history are rolling” toward reunification. If he didn’t think history was moving in "right" direction that would be a much more dangerous signal.
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@eosnos
Moreover, Li Keqiang had developed a reputation as someone less ideological and more moderate than Xi Jinping. And Li was someone who could have been leader. That makes him somewhat similar to Zhou Enlai and Hu Yaobang.
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As Kang Sheng once said, "Foreigners (meaning the Comintern) never understand the questions and issues in China (meaning the Central Committee and Chairman Mao), but even we ourselves don't understand either."
As people wonder what happened to Qin Gang, thanks
@jordanschnyc
@wstv_lizzi
for re-upping their podcast interview with me where we talk about the difficulties of studying elite politics.
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@eosnos
For now, I think we have a poor sense of how the population will react. And, perhaps most importantly, we should remember China’s security apparatus is much savvier now than it was when Hu Yaobang died.
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The immediate task facing the Chinese leadership will be to come up with an obituary that pleases Li’s family (which is not always easy, especially if the family is unhappy about something), suits the regime’s political agenda, and does not inflame popular sentiment.
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@eosnos
I similarly don’t think Li Keqiang ever openly, or even carefully, resisted Xi. Li, a typical product of the Party, was careful to toe the line, no matter what he thought personally.
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Thanks for the interest, everyone. Here's an introduction to the book.
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*Brand new*: my syllabus for the
@AU_SIS
qualitative methods course for PhD students. The class combines both thinking about qualitative methods conceptually and the nitty gritty of collecting, interpreting, and presenting evidence.
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For people interested in "kremlinology but for China" I'd rec "The study of elite political conflict in the PRC" by Fred Teiwes, "Why Do We Keep Writing About Chinese Politics As If We Know More Than We Do?" by Oliver Melton and Jessica Batke, and "Valedictory" by Alice Miller
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Li’s death also comes at a time of what
@eosnos
recently called “malaise” in China. With the economy facing headwinds, a tense political atmosphere, high-level purges, and important upcoming meetings, Zhongnanhai already had a lot on its plate.
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Wow... very interesting new collection of archival documents from
@NSArchive
on "years of secret diplomacy to press the Soviets to terminate the daily microwave transmissions directed at the U.S. Embassy building."
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This new piece by Jiang Shigong is remarkable for several reasons. It claims that the US plot to achieve “peaceful evolution” was actually working precisely as DC hoped – engagement created a materialistic pro-US class that wanted privatization and democratization. (thread)
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Happy to introduce my brand new, opensource Journal of Cold War Studies article, which uses new sources to present a revised history of Khrushchev's fall in 1964 and to challenge popular pol. science theories about elite politics in Leninist regimes.
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First blurb for my book (from Dorothy Solinger): "Torigian's stellar research and personal interviews have produced a brilliant, meticulous study. It fundamentally undermines what political scientists have presumed to be the way Chinese Communist and Soviet politics operate."
My book "Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao" is now available for pre-order at
@yalepress
.
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Xi also asked Ma “what the hell” former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui believed in, revealing Xi’s strong antipathy toward people he believes betray their duties to the legacies of Chinese civilization.
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Today is the fortieth anniversary of one of Deng Xiaoping’s most famous speeches: “Reform of the Party and State Leadership System.”
It is perhaps one of the most misunderstood speeches in Chinese history. Why did people get Deng's remarks so wrong? (thread)
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Pleased to say my article "Echoes of June 1941 in March 1969: Intelligence and Escalation on the (Far) Eastern Front," a new account of the Sino-Soviet clash in March of that year that draws upon new Russian and Chinese primary sources, was just accepted for publication at JCWS
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Ultimately, I don’t think it makes sense to think of China as “with” or “against” Russia and that this variable will change fundamentally or swiftly or soon. We should think more about what China does in practical terms within the partnership and not expect dramatic shifts.
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A bit stunned by Stephen Kotkin’s discussion of my book in ChinaTalk podcast with
@jordanschnyc
@yalepress
@YaleBooks
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A bit of personal news: delighted to participate in this year's Wilson Center China Fellowship Program, especially since it will be a good chance to hang out with so many old friends!
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Using newly available documents from the Russian archives, including KGB and GRU material, I write for
@ForeignPolicy
on how the Soviet Union struggled to understand China's nuclear weapons program during the Cold War
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Two important new Chinese language books recently published outside the mainland: one the history of a pro-reform journal that was closed in 1987, another an autobiography written by Xu Youyu, a prominent liberal intellectual who has suffered for criticizing the regime
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From 1935 to 1945, Xi Zhongxun was stationed first in Guanzhong and then Suide, two areas under CCP control that directly abutted KMT territory. XZX had the complicated task of competing against, cooperating with, and winning over local KMT forces.
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First, Hu Jintao is the decades-long product of a system in which everyone is taught that the party's interests come first. Even if you disagree with something, you don't express it openly, because it would only make the situation worse for everyone and you in particular.
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Brand new podcast in which I discuss elite politics in China and Russia, the legacy of Stalinism and Maoism, Xi family history, and how history can be used to understand the present
🎙️Episode 168🎙️
"People still think of Chinese history as this two-line struggle because that’s the story the Chinese tell," says
@JosephTorigian
.
We discuss his new book Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion from
@yalepress
. Listen here👇
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@eosnos
That’s a somewhat ironic outcome. As I’ve argued elsewhere (or will be arguing in my forthcoming book), Zhou Enlai and Hu Yaobang were deeply loyal to Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping and did not really represent a separate political “line.”
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One possible advantage to having Li Qiang as premier is that it will likely end the possibility that people will interpret some of his statements as a “separate line,” like what happened with Li Keqiang and might have happened with Wang Yang or Hu Chunhua as premier.
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Second, as
@ByChunHan
writes, Xi Jinping's style is to slowly and deliberately undermine people with some political finesse, not do something sudden and shocking like a purge at a Party Congress.
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Brutal reading but essential new work by
@YouqinWang
@OneworldNews
, with a forward by the late Rod MacFarquhar
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In the 1950s, XZX was given a big role in united front work by Zhou Enlai. As a child, Xi Jinping would have often seen his father meeting socially with former KMT officials – behavior for which XZX was criticized after his 1962 purge.
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Third, Chinese politics is a knife fight, but it's not typical for the leader to act in a way that more obviously contravenes norms than is really useful (something i argue about in my book)
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In June 1971, Mao Zedong told Ceaușescu China had neither the capabilities nor interest to go to the moon. Zhou Enlai cut in to say, "It doesn't even have air or water... The problems on earth haven't been solved, but they want to go up to the moon, it's ridiculous."
China launched an unmanned space mission this morning to bring back rocks from the moon. Only the US & Soviet Union have ever brought moon rocks back, & that was decades ago. by
@siobhan_ogrady
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At CPPCC, Xi Jinping said: China can already look straight at the world, we're not as crude 土 as in the past.
When people saw his mother in the 1950s and said she dressed crudely, XJP's father said: It's better to be crude than foreign! 土比洋好
土 is an interesting word...
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The Xi family takes great pride in the role of Xi Zhongxun, Xi Jinping's father, in the establishment of the Special Economic Zones. Yet Xi Jinping in his commemoration speech not only did not use his father's name, but also misleadingly over-emphasized Deng Xiaoping's role.
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And finally, I don't believe Xi Jinping is motivated by whatever antagonisms his father might have had. In fact, princelings usually get along quite well with the offspring of people who persecuted their own parents. The party is a family, and the party's interests come first.
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@eosnos
And we should also keep in mind that Li is different from Hu Yaobang in important ways, despite the comparisons between the two I’ve seen online. Unlike Li, Hu had revolutionary credentials, was charismatic, excitable and incautious, and his record was widely viewed as impressive
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Check out this interesting new collection of Chinese Covid-19 posters put together by the Princeton Library for free online viewing:
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Xi has talked in great detail about his experiences during the Cultural Revolution, but, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe this is the first time he's mentioned participating in "revolutionary networking" (when young people traveled throughout country to talk revolution)
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Given the recent interest in Cardinal Joseph Zen, I thought I'd write a thread on how Xi Zhongxun, the father of Xi Jinping, managed Catholicism in the 1950s and 1980s. Despite Xi Zhongxun's reputation as a liberal, he consistently demonstrated a hardline position on Catholics.
Even before Zen's arrest, “within the Catholic Church, the antagonism between the pro-democracy and pro-government camps became very serious…Some people saw him as their representative, while others completely rejected that.”
@yuenok
@selina_cheng
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Re-upping my piece on the history of Xi Jinping’s father and Islam in China
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Xi Zhongxun was engaged in secret backchannel negotiations with Taipei, and the failure to achieve reunification before his death deeply rankled him. (He apparently thought Lee Teng-hui was too blame)
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Please check out my brand new article "A New Case For the Study of Individual Events in Political Science," published open access at
@GSQ_Journal
!
🚨 New Article Alert to start the week: "A New Case for the Study of Individual Events in Political Science" by
@JosephTorigian
Read OPEN ACCESS here:
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If Kim Jong Un is in poor health and his sister takes charge, that would be a major precedent for Leninist regimes in terms of a woman relative of a leader. Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung considered their wives as successors but dropped the idea to a significant extent due to sexism.
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XZX’s biggest triumph in the war against the KMT after the defeat of Japan was political, most famously convincing KMT forces in Hengshan to defect at a crucial moment. The defection of KMT General Zhang Zhizhong also facilitated the entry of Xinjiang into Xi’s Northwest Bureau.
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A December 9 People's Daily article that criticizes the Cultural Revolution and praises Deng Xiaoping and reform and opening has been interpreted as a sign of competing voices within the CCP and a criticism of Xi. I think that's incorrect (thread).
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