Deng Xiaoping is Not Who You Think He is. Joseph Torigian on Leadership Transitions in China and the Soviet Unio

People still think of Chinese history as this two-line struggle because that's the story the Chinese tell. But everything from Mao Zedong's relationship to Liu Shaoqi to anything that happened during the 1980s, it was not a problem of competing policy platforms. It was a problem of getting the politics of your relationship with the top leader right when it was hard to guess what they were thinking and they were changing their mind and they were suspicious of you.

Joseph Torigian

Access Bonus Episodes on Patreon

Make a one-time Donation to Democracy Paradox.

A full transcript is available at www.democracyparadox.com.

Joseph Torigian is a Research Fellow at the Harvard History Lab. Previously he was an assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington and a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center. He is the author of Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao.

Key Highlights

Introduction - 0:48Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng - 2:33Khrushchev Consolidates Power - 16:16Will History Repeat? - 30:11Connections to Contemporary China - 38:31

Key Links

Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao by Joseph Torigian

Harvard History Lab

Learn more about Joseph Torigian

Democracy Paradox Podcast

Hal Brands Thinks China is a Declining Power… Here’s Why that’s a Problem

Anne Applebaum on Autocracy, Inc

More Episodes from the Podcast

More Information

Democracy Group

Apes of the State created all Music

Email the show at [email protected]

Follow on Twitter @DemParadox, Facebook, Instagram @democracyparadoxpodcast

100 Books on Democracy

Learn more about the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at https://kellogg.nd.edu/

Support the Show.