Red China's Green Revolution : Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development Under the Commune / Joshua Eisenman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Eisenman, Joshua, 1977- author.

Contributor:

White, Lynn T., III, 1941- Contributor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Green Revolution--China.

Communes (China).

Agriculture--Economic aspects--China.

Agriculture and state--China.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (436 pages) : illustrations, tables

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Columbia University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

China’s dismantling of the Mao-era rural commune system and return to individual household farming under Deng Xiaoping has been seen as a successful turn away from a misguided social experiment and a rejection of the disastrous policies that produced widespread famine. In this revisionist study, Joshua Eisenman marshals previously inaccessible data to overturn this narrative, showing that the commune modernized agriculture, increased productivity, and spurred an agricultural green revolution that laid the foundation for China’s future rapid growth.Red China’s Green Revolution tells the story of the commune’s origins, evolution, and downfall, demonstrating its role in China’s economic ascendance. After 1970, the commune emerged as a hybrid institution, including both collective and private elements, with a high degree of local control over economic decision but almost no say over political ones. It had an integrated agricultural research and extension system that promoted agricultural modernization and collectively owned local enterprises and small factories that spread rural industrialization. The commune transmitted Mao’s collectivist ideology and enforced collective isolation so it could overwork and underpay its households. Eisenman argues that the commune was eliminated not because it was unproductive, but because it was politically undesirable: it was the post-Mao leadership led by Deng Xiaoping—not rural residents—who chose to abandon the commune in order to consolidate their control over China. Based on detailed and systematic national, provincial, and county-level data, as well as interviews with agricultural experts and former commune members, Red China’s Green Revolution is a comprehensive historical and social scientific analysis that fundamentally challenges our understanding of recent Chinese economic history.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

FOREWORD / White The Third, Lynn T.

PROLOGUE: CHINA’S MISSING INSTITUTION

Chapter One. Introduction: Assessing Commune Productivity

Part I. Creating China’s Green Revolution

Chapter Two. Institutional Origins and Evolution

Chapter Three. China’s Green Revolution

Part II. Sources of Commune Productivity

Chapter Four. Economics: Super-Optimal Investment

Chapter Five. Politics: Maoism

Chapter Six. Organization: Size and Structure

Chapter Seven. Burying the Commune

Chapter Eight. Conclusion

APPENDIX A. NATIONAL AND PROVINCIAL AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION DATA, 1949–1979

APPENDIX B. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS FOR CHAPTER 6

APPENDIX C. ESSENTIAL OFFICIAL AGRICULTURAL POLICY STATEMENTS ON THE COMMUNE, 1958–1983

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Sep 2018)

ISBN:

9780231546751

0231546750

OCLC:

1029856422