Joseph Fewsmith is Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the Boston University Pardee School. He is the author of seven books, including, most recently, Forging Leninism in China: Mao and the Remaking of the Chinese Communist Party, 1927-1934. Other works include Rethinking Chinese Politics (June 2021), The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China (January 2013), and China since Tiananmen (2nd edition, 2008). Other books include Elite Politics in Contemporary China (2001), The Dilemmas of Reform in China: Political Conflict and Economic Debate (1994), and Party, State, and Local Elites in Republican China: Merchant Organizations and Politics in Shanghai, 1890-1930 (1985). He was one of the seven regular contributors to the China Leadership Monitor, a quarterly web publication analyzing current developments in China from 2002 to 2014.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Fewsmith traveled to China regularly and was active in the Association for Asian Studies. His articles have appeared in such journals as Asian Survey, Comparative Studies in Society and History, The China Journal, The China Quarterly, Current History, The Journal of Contemporary China, Problems of Communism, and Modern China. He is a Center Associate of the John King Fairbank Center for China Studies at Harvard University and an associate of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University. Professor Fewsmith’s areas of expertise include comparative politics as well as Chinese domestic politics and foreign policy.