The Making of Xi Jinping

School of War · Oct 16, 2026 · 1h 7m

During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party purged Xi Jinping’s father and subjected him to 16 years of persecution and imprisonment—so how did the current president of China emerge more devoted to the party than ever? “It’s like a comic book villain origin story,” says Aaron MacLean. Today, Joseph Torigian, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping, joins School of War to explore the strange and dark story of China’s current president, the brutality of Mao’s China, and how it…