Rate My Professor Frederick Teiwes

Frederick C. Teiwes is Emeritus Professor of Chinese Politics in the School of Social and Political Sciences, Department of Government and International Relations, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, at the University of Sydney. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in European history from Amherst College in 1961 and a Doctor of Philosophy in political science from Columbia University in 1971, with his dissertation focused on rectification campaigns and purges in Communist China from 1950 to 1961. Prior to his academic career, Teiwes worked as a journalist at the Providence Journal in Westerly, Rhode Island. He commenced teaching at Cornell University in 1969 for three years, then held a research appointment at the Australian National University in Canberra from 1972 to 1976. Joining the University of Sydney in 1976, he progressed to a personal chair as Professor in Government and International Relations, serving until his retirement in 2006.

Teiwes is renowned for his scholarship on Chinese elite politics since 1949, particularly the dynamics of leadership, party factionalism, purges, rectification movements, and transitions during the Mao era and beyond, including the roles of Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping in dismantling Maoism. His major publications encompass Leadership, Legitimacy, and Conflict in China: From a Charismatic Mao to the Politics of Succession (1984), Politics at Mao’s Court: Gao Gang and Party Factionalism in the Early 1950s (1990), Politics and Purges in China: Rectification and the Decline of Party Norms, 1950-65 (1993), The Tragedy of Lin Biao: Riding the Tiger During the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1971 (with Warren Sun, 1996), China’s Road to Disaster: Mao, Central Politicians, and Provincial Leaders in the Great Leap Forward, 1955-59 (with Warren Sun, 1999), and The End of the Maoist Era: Chinese Politics During the Twilight of the Cultural Revolution, 1972-1976 (with Warren Sun, 2007). Additional contributions include the chapter "Establishment and Consolidation of the New Regime" in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 14 (1987), as well as numerous articles on provincial politics, elite studies, and post-Mao reforms. Through meticulous analysis of primary documents, Teiwes has significantly shaped understandings of the Chinese Communist Party's core political processes.