Arriving in China at 23, Sidney Rittenberg spent 35 years as a “friend, confidante, translator, and journalist” for the Communist Party’s top leaders. In this interview, he recalls both his friendship with Chairman Mao and the 16 years he spent in solitary confinement.

How the ‘princeling’ descendants of Mao’s ‘Eight Immortals’consolidated unimaginable power and wealth in the New China.