Red China’s Green Revolution: Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development Under the Commune by Joshua Eisenman (review)

Informative and thought-provoking, Joshua Eisenman’s Red China’s Green Revolution pairs well with Sigrid Schmalzer’s Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China (2016) and other recent research as part of an ongoing shift in perceptions about the 1970s in China. The main argument of Red China’s Green Revolution is that the commune system built up in the Maoist era (1949–1976) was more productive than has been recognized by previous scholars. Therefore, the unwinding of the communes and the creation of the Household Responsibility System (HRS, between 1978 and 1983) was not primarily about improving productivity (its ostensible aim), nor was it due to grassroots pressure from farmers dissatisfied with the commune system (per the Party line), as much as it was about discrediting the rump Maoist wing of the Party and consolidating the power of Deng Xiaoping and his reform-minded protégés. In sum, following the disasters of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), reforms were adopted in the commune system (including allowing farmers to maintain private plots) that allowed it to regularly increase production on an annual basis. Afterward, gradual adjustments were made to the communes, especially beginning in the early 1970s, what Eisenman calls the “Green Revolution Commune.” Incentives were devised to extract greater amounts of labor through the workpoint system, while also increasing savings, which were then dedicated to improving technological inputs normally associated with the Green Revolution (such as chemical fertilizers and hybrid seed varieties). This model of agricultural modernization (the core of Eisenman’s argument, covered in chapters 3 and 4) was aided by a variety of initiatives in the countryside, including the proliferation of local research institutions and enterprises that spurred innovation and efficiency, extensive land reclamation, and an increased supply of skilled and semi-skilled labor (both “sent down” urbanites and rural residents who had become literate and received vocational training). Eisenman is clear to point out that the productivity of the people’s commune was only possible with relentless coercive political pressure, including from the people’s militia, competition and social shaming around the allocation of workpoints, and intense ideological commitment, including the personality cult of Mao Zedong (chapter 5). Eisenman’s most intricate and original argument (chapter 6) posits that the size of communes and the size of subcommune organizational units (production brigades composed of production teams) had a significant impact on productivity.

There are several issues that a critical reader may take up with Eisenman’s generally quite impressive book. For one, most of these arguments are less revolutionary than they claim to be (as the author himself acknowledges, 13–17), though they are generally more exhaustive and systematic than previous iterations by other scholars. Second, the book might give readers the false impression that the people’s commune was more productive than has been the case since the institution of the HRS, whereas what Eisenman has shown is that it was more productive in the 1970s than it had been in the 1960s. Moreover, there are concerns about the reliability of statistics from the Maoist period, which Eisenman recognizes while providing rebuttals for why his data are compelling (20–21). Some of these rebuttals are more convincing than others. Recent studies using interviews and archival documents, such as Gao Wangling’s Zhongguo nongmin fanxingwei yanjiu, 1950–1980 (2013) and Frank Dikötter’s polemic The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962–1976 (2016), show that a great deal of activity was not captured in the official data. Although Eisenman employs the best available data (reassessments of Mao-era statistics published in the early 1980s that meticulously sought to counteract such problems), particularly the collection Agricultural Economic Statistics (Nongye jingji ziliao, 1949–1983), given that his argument is so dependent on official statistics, these methodological concerns deserve a more thorough discussion (for wider context, see the recent book by Felix Wemheuer, A...