North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Joseph Torigian: How Xi Jinping’s father rebuilt China-North Korea ties

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

On this episode, scholar Joseph Torigian joins the podcast to discuss his new biography of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s father and Xi senior’s delicate diplomacy with North Korea in the 1980s. Torigian explores Xi Zhongxun’s role in rebuilding ties, navigating the DPRK’s succession politics and nudging Pyongyang toward reform. He also talks about how China […]

You're listening to an exclusive episode of the NK News podcast, available only to subscribers. You can listen to this and other episodes from your preferred podcast player by accessing the private podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide on the NKNews website at NKNews.org slash private-feed. Hello, listeners, and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jacko's Wetsuit, and this episode is being recorded via Streamyard on the evening of Thursday, the 14th of August 2025, And I'm joined here by Dr. Joseph Tarigian, who is the author of a new book, The Party's Interest Come First. Now, at just over 700 pages, it is a deeply researched political biography of Xi Zhong, the father of China's current leader, Xi Jinping.

And today we'll be talking about Xi Senior's delicate diplomacy with North Korea in the 1980s. And you'll find a more fuller bio of Dr. Tarigan and his three hats in the show notes. Welcome on the show, Dr. Trigian. Thank you so much, Jacko. I've really been looking forward to this podcast. So, Joe, this is the story of two revolutions, the Chinese and the North Korean, that took through radically different paths. One eventually turned towards markets and economic opening, and the other stayed pretty much

frozen in time. But in the early 1980s, we had Xi Zhongshun, the father of China's current leader, traveling to North Korea, praising its discipline, but also nudging it to reform. How did this moment come about and what was really a stake? So in the 1980s, the father of Xi Jinping, Xi Zhongshun, had a special role at the Secretariat that included managing Beijing's relations with foreign leftist, revolutionary, and communist parties. And that was a very interesting moment for him to be doing that. It was a moment when Beijing was trying to reestablish its relations with those parties

that had ended during the cultural revolution because of the radicalism, in Chinese foreign policy. In fact, relations between Beijing and Pyongyang also had become very fraught. There were some incidents on the border. Language by Chinese diplomats suggested that Kim Il-sung was a revisionist. Kim Il-sung was afraid that the Chinese would do something

even more dangerous. He said that we can expect anything from them in conversations with the Soviets. And so there is this process of rebuilding in 1980s that also was shaped by two other factors. One was China's move into a new direction economically, and that led to concerns in Pyongyang that the Chinese Communist Party was going to become revisionist, but also the North Koreans were trying to figure out the succession, and they wanted to make sure that Beijing was on board

with keeping it within the family. Okay, so what was Xi Chong Jun's role and standing in the Chinese Communist Party in the 1980s when he was most active in foreign affairs? And why was he chosen for this role? So I would say that he was at the bottom of the top, right? So he wasn't quite as old as the senior revolutionaries like Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun, but he was older than the New Guard, figures like Huyaobang and Zhao Ziyang. And there had been rumors, actually, that Xi Zhongshun would be the general secretary. And he said privately that he thought that he could have been it. But instead, what Deng Xiaoping decided to do was use him.

him in a way that allowed Xi Zhongshun to apply his skills, but not be given so much power that it would be problematic in the way that Deng might fear, because Deng and Xi had somewhat of a difficult relationship historically, right? And so Xi Zhongshun was a guy within the party that was seen as really good at managing people. He was kind of a people person, right? So that meant he also was deeply involved in the United Front within China. So he he was constantly talking to the parties that the CCP allowed to exist even after 1949 he had a special role managing relations with the Dalai Lama and Bettans and Uyghurs and so his his task trying to get even keel in their relationship with North Korea

was part of that right so he was pretty senior and he was good with people so in that sense it made sense that he would be put into this particular position okay so generally speaking and also specifically in his role in talking to North Korea, did he have genuine decision-making power, or was he more of a trusted envoy? Yeah, that's a really good question. So in the Chinese Communist Party, you have a very, very leader-friendly system, very leader-friendly. And so, Deng Xiaoping was the person who made all of the decisions unambiguously. And Huyaobang, who was the general secretary and led the secretariat, which is where Xi Zhongshun was working, He kept getting in trouble over and over because even though he understood how limited his space was for making decisions, he still stepped on Deng's toes, including on North Korea.

Deng Xiaoping thought that Huya Bung sometimes catered too much to the North Korean. Nevertheless, nevertheless, the reason you should still read my book is because in the CCP, the politics of the deputies who had to execute the policy set by the top leader, they found a very difficult. environment, maybe even a nightmarish political environment, right? Because the top leader still needed to delegate and their views still needed to be turned into concrete decision making. And so that's why the deputies kept getting in trouble is they were never quite sure how much space they had, even though they knew that it was limited. And they were never quite sure just exactly how to implement the decisions of the top leader. And also, as I said, Xi Zhongshun was someone who was pretty good at managing people. He was charismatic. And so that skill was not common within the elite,

right? So in the Chinese Communist Party, you had a system where people who had fought the revolution and who'd gone through a lot of horrific experiences, they had a lot of confidence in themselves. They were sometimes difficult people. They would think to themselves, why should we listen to the North Koreans? Or why should we listen to the Japanese? And so Xi Zhongshun was tough. You said you couldn't have a united front without principles. But at the very very, very least, he was somebody who could be charming and smiling when he wanted to. Okay. So we're setting the scene a little bit here. So we're in the early 1980s. We're what, less than 10, more than five years, but less than 10 from the end of the cultural revolution

in China. You've mentioned that the relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang was pretty fraught. And you've already hinted at some tension between Huyaabang and Deng Xiaoping over how warm Beijing should be towards Pyongyang. So could you tell us a little bit more before this this visit that we're about to talk about. Right. So the cultural revolution concludes, and now China has to figure out how they are going to save the revolution after nearly destroying the country. And so Deng Xiaoping and other leaders decide that they need to think much more about economic growth. And so we see decisions like the special economic zones. We see more rights going to the

the peasants, but we also see in China some interesting moments in succession politics, right? So the initial leader in China after Mao's death was a man named Huaguo Feng, and Deng pushed him out. And we know that communist regimes are constantly keeping an eye on each other and learning lessons from each other. And so on one trip to China, Kim Il-sung asked Zhang Xiaping a lot of questions about Huo-Wong. And that's not surprising, right? Because I'm sure that Kim was thinking to himself, well, how can I prevent in my country what happened within China? And he had seen other things too, right? So he had seen Lin Biao, the defense minister, a very close associate of Mao Zedong, try to flee to the Soviet Union and die in the process.

And so Kim might have learned certain lessons from that about how hard it is even to trust people who had fought a war with you, right? Right. And so when the senior Kim goes to China, he's, he's interested in a lot of things, right? He's trying to figure out whether the Chinese are going revisionist, which is, of course, communist jargon for whether you're going to stay loyal to the revolutionary line. He's trying to figure out what's going on with succession politics in China and what it might mean for him. And he also wants to bring the Chinese around to his own solution to the succession problem, which is to hand power over to his own son. And of course, the Chinese, they want certain things from the North Koreans too, right? So the Chinese understand that this new path that they're taking makes them vulnerable to charges that they're not really communist anymore. And the North Koreans really take that kind of thing seriously.

So they wanted to win from Kim this an affirmation that the Chinese path is legitimate. But they also want the North Koreans to think about their own economic trajectory. They also are hoping that the North Koreans will pursue a path. that makes them resilient economically. And finally, of course, they don't want the North Koreans to start a war because the Chinese think that they need a peaceful environment for their rise. In your research, did you get an impression of what Xi Zhong thought of Kim Il-sung before he actually met him?

So they had met in the 1950s. Oh, okay. It wasn't really a sort of meaningful, get-to-know-you-type conversation because at the time, Xi Zhongshin was involved in foreign policy. He was C-Ced on foreign policy documents. He was the right-hand man to Joe and Lai, who, of course, is very prominent in the China-North Korean relationship. And so when he met Kim Il-sung, they actually mentioned that they had seen each other, right? Although it's not exactly clear whether they had, I doubt they would have had a heart-to-heart during that period.

Xi-jong-chin wasn't quite senior enough. him, but they would have had a lot to talk about. Kim Il-sung was only one year older than Xi Zhongshun. It's interesting, too, when they met in Pyongyang, Xi Zhongshun wasn't someone who typically talked a lot about how much he suffered during the Cultural Revolution, but Kim Ilson pressed him on it, and Xi Zhongshun opened up a little bit. And in fact, when you read the official biography of Xi Zhongshun that was published within China, a lot of the material they use about Xi Zhong's experiences during the Cultural Revolution were drawn from the transcript of his conversation

with Kim Il-sung, right? That's very interesting. Oh, yeah, so how was it that Kim was able to get Xi Jinping to open up when he normally wouldn't? Curious to hear the rest? Become an NK News subscriber today for access to the full episode. Head to nknews.org slash join for more information. If you're already a subscriber to NK News,

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