Book Club Event - Munich Chapter
Thu, Jun 18
|Maximilianspl. 17, 80333 München-Altstadt-Lehel, Germany
European Guanxi is proud to present its first public book club discussion happening in Munich.
Time & Location
Jun 18, 2026, 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM GMT+2
Maximilianspl. 17, 80333 München-Altstadt-Lehel, Germany
About the Event
Online Attendance
Join us online on Zoom at this link
Meeting ID: 847 0063 4042
Passcode: 566889
Book Club Event - Munich Chapter
European Guanxi is proud to present its first public book club discussion. The evening will centre on Joseph Torigian’s The Party’s Interests Come First, the first English-language biography of Xi Zhongxun (1913–2002) - revolutionary, senior CCP official, and father of China’s current leader.
Drawing on newly available documents, diaries, and interviews, Torigian traces nearly a century of Chinese Communist history through one man’s struggle to balance personal conviction with Party loyalty. The discussion will explore what Xi Zhongxun’s life reveals about the organizational, ideological, and coercive power of the CCP — and what his legacy tells us about the political world his son now leads.
Participants are warmly encouraged to share their own readings and questions; no specialist background in Chinese history is needed to take part. Whether you join us in person or online, come ready for an open and wide-ranging conversation.
About Joseph Torigian
Joseph Torigian is an associate professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC; and a Center Associate of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan.
Torigian was previously a visiting fellow at the Australian Center on China in the World at Australian National University; a Stanton Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; a postdoctoral fellow at the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program; a postdoctoral (and predoctoral) fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation; a predoctoral fellow at George Washington University’s Institute for Security and Conflict Studies; an IREX scholar affiliated with the Higher School of Economics in Moscow; and a Fulbright Scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai.
His book Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao was published in 2022 by Yale University Press. His biography on Xi Jinping’s father, The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping, has been published in June 2025 with Stanford University Press. He studies Chinese and Russian politics and foreign policy.