Statistics and State-Society Relations in the Early People's Republic of China, 1949-1959
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Making it Count: Statistics and State-Society Relations in the Early People’s Republic of China, 1949-1959 Arunabh Ghosh Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Arunabh Ghosh All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Making it Count: Statistics and State-Society Relations in the Early People’s Republic of China, 1949-1959 Arunabh Ghosh This dissertation offers new perspectives on China’s transition to socialism by investigating a fundamental question—how did the state build capacity to know the nation through numbers? With the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, jubilant Chinese revolutionaries were confronted by the dual challenge of a nearly nonexistent statistical infrastructure and the pressing need to escape the universalist claims of capitalist statistics. At stake for revolutionary statisticians and economists was a fundamental difficulty: how to accurately ascertain social scientific fact. Resolving this difficulty involved not just epistemological and theoretical debates on the unity or disunity of statistical science but also practical considerations surrounding state-capacity building. The resultant shift toward a socialist definition of statistics, achieved by explicitly following the Soviet Union’s example, was instrumental in shaping new bureaus, designing statistical work, and training personnel. New classificatory schemes and methods of data collection also raised issues of authority and policy, ultimately not just remolding state-society relations but also informing new conceptions of everyday life and work. By the mid-1950s, however, growing disaffection with the efficacy of Soviet methods led the Chinese, in a surprising turn of events, to seek out Indian statisticians in an unprecedented instance of Chinese participation in South-South scientific exchange. At the heart of these exchanges was the desire to learn more about large-scale random sampling, an emergent statistical technology, which, while technically complex, held great practical salience for large countries like China and India. “Making it Count” engages with and contributes to scholarship on the history of modern China and on the global and Cold War histories of science and social science. While the historiography on statistics and quantification has focused primarily on the early-modern and nineteenth century world, the dissertation brings this history into the twentieth century, when states, multi-national institutions, and private actors, regardless of their ideological hue, mobilized statistics on behalf of positivist social science and statecraft. By examining the collection and deployment of data, a process critical to the ambitions of the revolutionary PRC state but one that has largely been overlooked in the historical literature, the dissertation also provides an alternative account for a decade often portrayed as lurching from one mass campaign to another. Finally, the examination of the Sino-Indian statistical links reveals that pioneering innovation took place in many contexts after 1945 and challenges Cold War paradigms that are predisposed to assume the United States or the Soviet Union as the primary nodes from which scientific and other forms of modern knowledge emanated. CONTENTS Charts, Graphs, and Illustrations ii Acronyms iii Acknowledgments iv I. Introduction 1 PART I: A Crisis in Counting II. Revolutionary Statistics in the early 1950s 22 III. Lies, Damned Lies, and (Bourgeois) Statistics—Ascertaining 60 Social Fact IV. No “Mean” Solution: The Reformulation of Statistical Science 99 PART II: Statistics in Action V. The Nature of Statistical Work 144 VI. To “Ardently Love Statistical Work”: State (In-) capacity, 190 Professionalization, and their Discontents VII. Statistical State, Quantified Society 238 PART III: Alternatives VIII. The Turn to India: Sino-Indian Statistical Exchanges, 1951-1959 268 IX. Epilogue: A ‘Great Leap’ in Statistics 337 REFERENCE MATTER Bibliography 347 i CHARTS, GRAPHS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS TABLES 3.1 Statistics and Socialist Statistics 78 3.2 Soviet Statistical Experts at the SSB 89 3.3 Collected Translations in Statistics 95 4.1 Frequency of Articles Criticizing “Bourgeois” 114 Statistics, 1949-1958 4.2 Introductory Statistics Textbooks 126 4.3 Comparison of Statistics Textbooks 128 4.4 Industrial and Agricultural Production 139 4.5 Growth in Modern Industry 140 5.1 Establishment of National, Regional, Provincial, 154 And City Level Statistical Bureaus 5.2 Composition of Central and Survey Team 169 5.3 Excess Forms at Two Nanjing Factories 171 6.1 Renmin University Statistics Graduates/Enrollees 202 6.2 Establishment of Dedicated Statistical Schools 204 or Departments 6.3 BFES—Early Characteristics 206 CHARTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 5.1 The State Statistical System 160 5.2 Annual Report Cover Page 161 5.3 The Dual Track Reporting System 177 ii ACRONYMS BFES Beijing Finance and Economics School BMA Beijing Municipal Archives DSJ Dashiji (Chronicle of Events in Statistics in China) (Zhonghua renmin gongheguo tongji dashiji, 1949-2009 《中华人 民共和国统计大事记》) NAI National Archives of India NMML Nehru Memorial Museum and Library NSB Northeast Statistics Bureau PCMMMA P.C. Mahalanobis Memorial Museum and Archives, Kolkata RMRB Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily) RWTG Re’ai women the tongji gongzuo (Ardently Love our Statistcal Work 《热爱我们的统计工作》 SSB State Statistics Bureau TJGZ Tongji gongzuo (Statistical Work) TJGZTX Tongji gongzuo tongxun (Statistical Work Bulletin) WJB Waijiao bu (Foreign Ministry Archives), Beijing iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have incurred more debts writing this dissertation than I can hope to repay in one lifetime. Madeleine Zelin took me under her wing when I was a confused MA student. Her unstinting support, encouragement, and intellectual guidance over the years have significantly shaped my own thinking and approach to Chinese history. Eugenia Lean, as near as possible to a second advisor, has been a constant guide and influence in the classroom and outside ever since I was a student in her modern China seminar several years ago. Jacob Eyferth’s generosity and infectious enthusiasm are only outpaced by the depth of his knowledge of the early People’s Republic. I am grateful for the interest he has taken in my work and hope to keep learning from our ongoing conversations. The India part of this story would not have been possible without the interest, insights, and advice of Partha Chatterjee, who also generously made available to me his considerable network of friends and colleagues in Kolkata. Matt Connelly has been a source of inspiration right from when I took his seminar on population control and encountered a history of the twentieth century that was defined as much by transnational connections as other factors. I am grateful for the interest, feedback, and encouragement I have received over the years from Lydia Liu, Matt Jones, Betsy Blackmar, Dorothy Ko, Gray Tuttle, and Ken Prewitt. Lydia Liu was also instrumental in helping me find an intellectual and institutional home at Tsinghua University in Beijing during my year of fieldwork in China. Bill McAllister, the Director of the Mellon Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellows Program at INCITE, set a tremendous example of fellowship and intellectual commitment, which I shall endeavor to emulate. A special word of thanks to Bob Hymes, iv who put the EALAC department firmly in my corner as I took my first tentative steps in East Asian studies. I first became interested in Chinese history in Paul Smith’s seminars at Haverford College. Paul’s friendship and encouragement over the years, especially as I summoned up the courage to embark on a career in Chinese history without yet having begun any language study, have been more significant than he probably realizes. I am grateful that I attended Haverford at a time when the Junior Research Seminar was a central component of the History Major. The early opportunity to produce new scholarship using historical artifacts and documents remains one of the highlights of my undergraduate years and played no small role in nudging me towards making a career out of historical research. Friends at Columbia and elsewhere have made the years in graduate school intellectually absorbing and enormously enjoyable. Meha Priyadarshini, Sayaka Chatani, Liza and Collin Lawrence, Daniel Asen, Ryan Martin, Peiting Li, and Timothy Yang have been fellow journeymen from the very beginning. Anatoly Detwyler and Richard So have been fast friends and intellectual co-conspirators for some years now. I thank Manan Ahmed, Jennifer Altehenger, Bao Xianqing, Joshua Batts, Glenda Chao, Buyun Chen, Cyrus Chen, Chen Kaijun, Divya Cherian, Christopher Craig, Joanna Dee Das, Rohit De, Andre Deckrow, Clay Eaton, Manfred Elfstrom, Seema Golestaneh, Gal Gvili, Reto Hofmann, Colin Jones, Abhishek Kaicker, Alyssa Kim, Yumi Kim, Ulug Kuzuoglu, Jenny Lah, Brian Lander, Julia del Palacio Langer, Andy Liu, Luo Weiwei, Olivia Nicol, Greg Patterson, Chelsea Schieder, Beatrice Schraa, Myra Sun, Anand Taneja, Mehmet Tezgul, Simon Taylor, Rob Tuck, Tal Unreich, Sören Urbansky, Stacey Van Vleet, Sixiang Wang, Jake Werner, Stephen Wertheim, Zhang Jian, Zhong Yurou, and many v others in the Columbia community for the warmth of their friendship and support. Liza Lawrence, Toby Harper, and Kristen Roebuck generously read portions of the final draft and offered trenchant comments. Gaurav Pant, Abhimanyu Yadav, Meha Desai, Matt Spigelman,