China

“Guessing about whether Jinping cares more about ‘ideology/security’ or ‘development’ is a distraction from the basic point that the Party has always cared about both, even though the pursuit of two such goals simultaneously inevitably creates tensions” (p. 543).

One of the central lessons of The Party’s Interests Come First is that the familiar labels used in China-watching—reformer versus conservative, or more morally charged binaries like good versus bad—often collapse under scrutiny. Torigian dismantles these categories, showing how supposed heroes were less heroic than assumed, and villains less villai... See more

The much-touted “institutionalization” of Chinese politics under Deng Xiaoping is revealed as largely illusory. Torigian’s detailed reconstruction of events surrounding Deng’s autocratic and often arbitrary purges—of Hua Guofeng, Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang (and, as an aside, nearly Jiang Zemin)—paints a far less orderly picture. Deng emerges, in the w... See more