Joseph Torigian is an assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C. He has also held numerous other fellowships. His latest book, Prestige, Manipulation and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao, was published in May by Yale University Press. Torigian spoke to The Wire about common misconceptions surrounding China’s post-Mao era, the failures of institutionalization in China, and how elite powe