Frederick C. Teiwes

Leadership, legitimacy, and conflict in China : from a charismatic Mao to the politics of succession

This bibliography is the only source for citations to North American scholarship on Eastern and Central Europe, the Balkans, the Baltic States, and the former Soviet Union.

China's Road to Disaster: Mao, Central Politicians, and Provincial Leaders in the Unfolding of the Great Leap Forward, 1955-1959

Ten American and Japanese specialists offer a comprehensive analysis of one of the most dramatic developments in Asia today: the re-emergence of Vietnam - not as the belligerent champion of a militant ideology and socialist cause, but as an open, friendly country seeking a respected place in the world community. Basing their observations on five years of study, visits to Vietnam, and numerous interviews with knowledgeable officials, scholars and businessmen there and in the United States and Japan, the authors evaluate the political, ecnomic, social and foreign policy changes that have been taking place in Vietnam over the past decade, trace the responses of the United States and Japan and offer a policy prescription for responding to the challenges of the future.

The Paradoxical Post-Mao Transition: From Obeying the Leader to `Normal Politics'

* Lucien Bianco, Tim Cheek, Bruce Dickson, Keith Forster, David Goodman, Carol Hamrin, Bruce Jacobs, Tony Saich, Susan Shirk, K. K. Shum, Dorothy Solinger, Jon Unger, Graham Young and especially Warren Sun (who also provided additional important contributions) commented on earlier versions of this article. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Australian Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation, and the University of Sydneys research grants scheme and its Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific, which made possible the research on which this is based. 1 Reuters dispatch on Dengs press conference, The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 February 1981, p.5. 2 Interview, Beijing, 1994. 3 Interview, Beijing, 1991.

The Purge of Provincial Leaders 1957–1958

In December 1957, after the rectification-turned-anti-rightist campaign, an eleven-month series of provincial purges began. They affected twelve Chinese provinces and autonomous regions, in roughly chrono-logical order: Chekiang, Anhwei, Kansu, Tsinghai, Shantung, Hopei, Yunnan, Kwangtung, Sinkiang, Kwangsi, Honan, Liaoning and Shantung, again. With the exception of the Liaoning and second Shantung purges, all of these cases were reviewed at the second session of the Eighth Party Congress in May, 1958. The victims of the purges included four alternate members of the Central Committee, one provincial first secretary, eighteen members of standing committees of provincial committees, five secretaries of provincial committee secretariats, ten members of these secretariats, four governors, and ten vice-governors as well as approximately twenty-five other officials holding Party or government positions on the provincial level. In brief, this was no minor matter.

The Origins of Rectification: Inner–Party Purges and Education before Liberation

Rectification as an approach to inner–Party discipline emphasizes persuasive methods and education, but it does not eschew coercive measures including the purge. As students of Chinese politics are well aware, this form of coercive persuasion was comprehensively developed in the early 1940s as Mao Tse–tung consolidated his leadership, rectification theories were expounded, and the first rectification campaign of 1942–44 was carried out. Official histories and much scholarly analysis identify rectification with Mao while asserting that other leaders advocated sharply contrasting approaches. Thus CCP leaders before 1935 purportedly pushed coercive disciplinary methods – dubbed “ruthless struggles and merciless blows “ – while Mao attempted to foster systematic education. Maos undoubted contributions to rectifi cation notwithstanding, the following analysis argues that this view both overstates actual differences and overlooks the developing nature of Maos position.

The politics of agricultural cooperativization in China : Mao, Deng Zihui, and the "high tide" of 1955

The conveners (the editors of this book) of the September 1989 Four Anniversaries China Conference in Annapolis, asked the contributors to look back from that point in time to consider four major events in modern Chinese history in the perspective of the rapid changes that were shaping the Chinese society, economy, polity, and sense of place in the world in the 1980s, a time when China was making rapid strides toward becoming more integrated with the outside world. With contributions by distinguished scholars in the field, the four anniversaries considered are the High Qing, the May Fourth Movement, forty years of communism in China, and ten years of the Deng era.

Mao and His Lieutenants

* An earlier version of this article was presented to the annual conference of the Australasian Political Studies Association, Brisbane, 28 August 1986. I would like to thank Warren Sun for his research assistance, and David Chambers, Tim Cheek, Edward Friedman, Graeme Gill, Bruce Jacobs, Kenneth Lieberthal, Roderick MacFarquhar, Michel Oksenberg, K.K. Shum, Dorothy Solinger, Wang Gungwu, Brantly Womack, Michael Yahuda and especially Keith Forster for their comments on the earlier paper and/or generous provision of source material. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Australian Research Council which made this study possible.

Before and After The Cultural Revolution

It comes as no surprise to current visitors to China that their hosts place great emphasis on the accomplishments of the Cultural Revolution. While production increases and improvements in living conditions are repeatedly cited, the basic change is spiritual – before the Cultural Revolution, elitist and selfish attitudes were allegedly widespread; since the Revolution, a new commitment to the common good by cadres and masses alike has purportedly enriched Chinese life. This preoccupation with the Cultural Revolution stems from more than a need to justify past upheavals, it reflects an ongoing debate over the realization of goals sanctified by that movement. The twin efforts of rebuilding the system and institutionalizing Cultural Revolution reforms have apparently caused deep misgivings on the part of some leaders who see a thinly disguised effort to “restore the old.” Thus the question of how China has changed since 1965 is of current policy relevance as well as intrinsic scholarly interest.

China’s Economic Reorientation After the Third Plenum: Conflict Surrounding “Chen Yun’s” Readjustment Program, 1979–80*

Although the broad outlines of the conflicting views and interests concerning economic readjustment following the December 1978 Third Plenum are adequately understood in the existing literature, academic accounts and the official narrative seriously misunderstand or misrepresent the élite politics surrounding the readjustment program in 1979–80. The view that Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun joined forces in an alliance against Hua Guofeng has merit, but not, as commonly claimed, as a rejection of Hua’s failed economic policies—Deng in fact was the most forceful advocate of the pre-plenum policies which Chen found most detrimental. The second widely accepted proposition, that Deng and Chen subsequently fell out along reform vs. readjustment lines, with Chen gaining the upper hand by late 1980, also distorts political reality. When readjustment finally achieved its most forceful manifestation, the actual policies were formulated by Zhao Ziyang, with Deng’s crucial backing.

Deng Xiaoping, China, and the World

Editor’s Note: Deng Xiaoping had a crucial impact on China’s role in the world in the latter half of the twentieth century. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai oversaw Chinese foreign policy during the country’s first quarter century of Communist rule—initially establishing a close alliance with the Soviet Union, then turning bitterly against the USSR at the end of the 1950s, and finally pursuing a rapprochement with the United States in the early 1970s—but it was Deng who made the momentous decision in the late 1970s to integrate China into the global economic order that had been largely shaped by the United States from the mid-1940s on. When Mao and Zhou died in 1976, China was still one of the poorest countries in the world. Deng’s bid to link China with the international capitalist system spawned a prolonged period of rapid economic growth that nowadays has made the Chinese economy the second largest in the world. In political terms, however, Deng never made a full break with Maoism. Deng’s willingness to use brutal violence against unarmed demonstrators in Beijing in June 1989—killing many hundreds of people—kept China from modernizing its political system in a way compatible with the dynamism of its rapidly growing economy. Deng’s legacy in China is thus mixed, having turned his country into an economic powerhouse but having left it under a repressive authoritarian system. Over the past several years, two important biographies of Deng have appeared in English, one put out in 2011 by a colleague of mine at Harvard, Ezra Vogel, and the other produced by Alexander V. Pantsov, assisted by Steven I. Levine. Pantsov, who spent the first part of his career in Moscow before moving to the United States in the early 1990s and becoming a professor of history (currently at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio), originally published the book in Russian in 2013. Soon thereafter he teamed up with Levine to put