[3] Terrill completed his PhD in Political Science in 1970 at Harvard University, where he studied with Stanley Hoffmann, Benjamin I. Schwartz, and John King Fairbank.
These works proved to be popular among the East Asian countries, with over 1.5 million copies of Terrill's Mao (translated into Chinese) sold in China.
Terrill also spent some of his life in the public eye through his appearances on The Today Show four times, CBS News as a commentator, and ABC's Nightline.
In his writings, he highlighted how few Westerners had set foot in the People's Republic of China, with Australians requiring permission from the Government to visit.
[3] Terrill also spent 14 years as an editor for The Atlantic Monthly where he wrote 19 articles and contributed to other magazines such as National Geographic and Foreign Affairs.
[1] Throughout his career, Terrill has continued to publish articles on the Chinese government, political leaders such as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, and China's economy.
From 1974 to 1978 Terrill spent most of his time at Harvard as a University Director of Student Programs in International Affairs and Associate Professor of Government.
[7] In 1978, Terrill also spent a year as a research fellow in East Asian studies at Harvard where he collected and consolidated information on Chinese law and completed other tasks such as editing publication work.
[8] Knight continues that although Terrill does utilise some updated sources from China, these missing theoretical texts by Mao might have provided an insight into the influence of Marxism.
[8] In his criticism of Terrill's work, Knight states that these updated sources suggest that Mao was greatly influenced by Orthodox Soviet Marxism in the 1930s.
[8] However, Shia-ling Liu provides a positive review of Terrill's China in Our Time: The Epic Saga of the People's Republic: From the Communist Victory to Tiananmen Square and Beyond in 1995.
Liu writes that the book is "rich in information, revealing in dialogue, captivating in description and highly readable".
[7] In his response, Terrill suggests that Woo fails to recognise that the comments made regarding the United States being a beacon of democracy and freedom are written from the point of view of the Chinese.
According to Terrill, the thousands of Chinese wishing to migrate to the United States each year speaks for “the appeal of American values and opportunities”.