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.

i

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

ii

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

iii

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

iv

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,

v

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

vi

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, Rob Barry, Eveline Chao, Garrett McVaugh, and Falguni Sen made it easy to

escape into other worlds whenever I needed to get away from Morningside Heights.

Numerous colleagues from within the China field and outside have given of their

time and energy to comment on parts of the dissertation or discuss points of mutual

interest, whether at conferences, workshops or over a drink or two. I would like to thank

Zuoyue Wang, Fa-ti Fan, Tong Lam, Jahanvi Phalkey, Sigrid Schmalzer, Leon Rocha,

David Luesink, Malcolm Thompson, Victor Seow, Jeremy Brown, Philip Thai, Yeh

Wen-hsin, Aminda Smith, Emma Rothschild, Tansen Sen, Margherita Zanasi, Elisabeth

Köll, Benno Weiner, Alex Cook, and Thomas Mullaney. This dissertation would be

much the poorer without their insights, probing questions, and invaluable suggestions.

Over the course of several summers and an year-long stint of research in Beijing,

I benefited from the support of a host of scholars and institutions. Professor Yuan Wei at

Renmin University took a personal interest in my research. Without his help, I would

have been unable to meet and interview Professors Ni Jiaxun and Lin Fude, or Gong

Jianyao and Wu Hui. I am grateful to these four elderly gentlemen for taking the time to

sit down with me and recall the events of more than half a century ago. The dissertation is

substantially informed and shaped by what I learned from them. I am thankful to Prof.

Wu Cangping for sharing some of his memories of the 1950s with me. Prof. Liu

Beicheng, with whom I enjoyed numerous long and wide-ranging chats in cafes around

Beijing Normal University, was a constant source of encouragement, always ready with a

vii

fresh insight every time I shared my latest archival findings. I thank Professors Yang

Kuisong, Xu Jianqing, and Zhang Jiuchen, who at various times provided me with their

help or offered me a venue to share my ongoing work.

I am grateful for the professionalism and friendliness of the entire staff of the

Beijing Municipal Archives; the Foreign Ministry Archives; the Archives of Tsinghua

University; the Resource Room of the Statistics Department at Renmin University; the

library of the Institute of Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; the

National Library of China; and the Library of Tsinghua University. Margaret Tillman,

Amanda Shuman, and Zach Scarlett ensured a sense of shared enterprise during our daily

grind at the BMA. Adrian Sandiford and Hannah Oussedik opened their apartment to me

over two summers. Special thanks to James Cheah, Amy Qin, Jamie Chu, Badri

Chillarige, Julia Chuang, James DeSantis, Jee-Eun Choi, Angie Baecker, Li Li, Gao

Lanfang, Anders Hansen, Austin Ramzy, Julian Fisher, and Zhang Jian for making

Beijing such a fun place to live in.

In India, I would like to thank the staff at the Nehru Memorial Museum and

Library; the Indian Council of World Affairs; the Institute of Economic Growth; the

National Archives of India; and the National Library. Dr. Nibedita Ganguly and Ms

Krishna Bhattacharya of the Indian Statistical Institute made my visits to the P.C.

Mahalanobis Memorial Museum and Archives in Kolkata a real pleasure. Their

generosity and enthusiasm for archiving Mahalanobis’ activities made possible the

substantiation of a fascinating episode in post-colonial Sino-Indian history. Professors

Manoranjan Mohanty, Madhavi Thampi, and Jabin Jacob offered me a venue to share my

work and introduced me to the China studies community in New Delhi. Thanks to

viii

Narayan Sen, Debkumar Bose, and Meera Kosambi, who spoke to me about China and

India in the 1950s. Jasbir Singh Malik, Preetika Suri, Samarendra Bhuiyan, Shoili

Kanungo, Abhinav Madan, Warisha Farasat, Kaustabh Chakraborty, and Dhruv Swamini

have been stalwart friends; perhaps not always clear on what exactly I was up to, but

never letting that come in the way of our friendship.

The writing of this dissertation has been supported by the financial munificence of

a number of sources. For their generous support, I am grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon

Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research

Council, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Columbia), the Interdisciplinary

Center for Innovate Theory and Empirics (Columbia), the Weatherhead East Asian

Institute (Columbia), the Department of History (Columbia), the Department of East

Asian Languages and Cultures (Columbia), and the Inter-University Program for Chinese

Language Studies (Berkeley).

The final words are reserved for family, to whom I owe everything. My parents,

Indira and Partha Sarathy, whose support has been unconditional in spite of their

misgivings about another generation entering the academy, to my sister, Suparna, who

has kept it more real than her brother and parents combined, and to the extended Ghosh

and Kaul families—my deepest gratitude.

ix

“…Thou shalt not sit

With statisticians nor commit

A social science.”

Under Which Lyre

A Reactionary Tract for the Times

(Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Harvard, 1946)

W. H. Auden

1

CHAPTER I

Introduction

2

A Crisis in Counting

On 1 October 1949, as Mao Zedong stood on the ramparts of the Gate of Heavenly Peace

in Beijing and declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), there

was no doubt a tremendous sense of optimism and anticipation. The Chinese Communist

Party (CCP) had won the Civil War against staggering odds and a new era of socialist

peace and prosperity beckoned. But challenges were legion too. And for a state that

promised to fundamentally re-engineer Chinese society and economy via socialist

planning, one of the biggest challenges was that of data. After all, planning requires data,

and good planning presumably requires good data. In 1949, such data was hard to come

by. Over the preceding four decades, starting with the collapse of the Qing Empire in

1911, China had experienced warlordism, a Japanese invasion, the Second World War,

and a debilitating Civil War. What the Communists inherited was a fractured and

withered state. The Nationalist Government’s central statistical agency on the eve of

1949, for instance, commanded a mere 5,000 personnel and, despite numerous attempts,

had never been able to conduct a nationwide census.1 For many CCP statisticians and

economists, the long-term prospects of transforming the PRC into a true socialist utopia

hinged, to a large degree, on being able to resolve this crisis of counting.

Today, any mention of China, statistics, and the 1950s is bound to evince in the

reader specters of a very different crisis. One of the twentieth century’s worst tragedies,

the famine of 1959-61 and the Great Leap Forward (GLF) that in many ways presaged it

form a teleological end-point in early PRC history, often constraining our ability to study

the 1950s on their own terms. Indeed, for those living in 1959, the year symbolized a

1 Zhu Junyi (Jennings P. Chu) 朱君毅. “The Independently Controlled Statistical System of the Chinese

Government.” In Proceedings of the International Statistical Conferences, Vol. II, 92-97. Washngton, D.C.:

U.N. World Statistical Confernce, 1947, p. 96.

3

very different milestone: the People’s Republic was turning ten. To celebrate the

occasion, China’s State Statistics Bureau (SSB) produced the volume “Ten Great Years,”

and declared in its preface that “an epic of world-shaking importance, forever worthy of

being recalled,” had undeniably begun to unfold. Page after successive page full of

numbers, tables, and charts followed—a veritable barrage of statistical data corralled to

provide indisputable proof that the Chinese had experienced “ten years of leaping

progress in economy and culture.”2 And so, we are presented with two starkly different

images—the crisis of 1949 and the celebration of 1959. How do we reconcile them?

What kind of statistical infrastructure did the Chinese build during the 1950s? How did

they count and know what China was? What impact did this counting have on state-

building and state-society relations? This dissertation addresses such questions.

That statistics are a core concern for all modernizing states goes without saying.

In general, one can think of two idealized models that a national statistical system might

gravitate toward: centralized or non-centralized. In a non-centralized system, a variety of

agencies—central and local government organs, trade bodies, private institutions,

research organizations, NGOs, etc.—all periodically collect and publish quantitative data

on social and economic activity. The overall quality and comprehensiveness of data rests

on the number and diversity of agencies collecting data. When their density is high, the

data they produce can represent a national whole. An example of this system is the

United States. On the other extreme is a centralized system in which a nationwide agency

is responsible for standardization (of methods, concepts, and schedules), supervision and

coordination (of public and private enterprises), and which has centralized control over

2 State Statistics Bureau. Weida de shinian 伟大的十年 (Ten Great Years). Beijing: People’s Press, 1959. p.

1 (Chinese language edition)

4

the utilization and release of all national data. Centralized statistics are especially

important for socialist states that rely on centrally planned economic growth. The former

USSR is an obvious example. The case of PRC after 1949 (and at least for its first decade)

is no different.3

In its simplest form, the crisis of counting in the PRC was understood as a

problem of building such a centralized statistical system. In December 1950, Zhang

Youyu 张友渔, Vice Mayor of Beijing, the first metropolitan area where the CCP formed

a government, offered the following analysis:4

Were there statistics in the past? No matter in liberated areas or in areas

under the old regime, we cannot say there were no statistics; just that they

were full of inadequacies. It is not that they did not value statistics; for

example, in the liberated areas, county and district committee reports did

carry reports and tables, but these materials in all likelihood were

incomplete, inaccurate, and unsystematic, and therefore couldn’t serve as

the basis [for anything]. As for areas under the old regime, their numbers

are even more unreliable since they are a product of formalism [形式主

义].5

This was indeed a familiar criticism, in line with the basic imperatives of state-building,

wherein expansion of state capacity is a central task for any government seeking to

establish order after decades of strife and civil war. A decade later, the economist Li

Choh-Ming’s dismissal of the statistical infrastructure inherited by the CCP would

largely echo Zhang’s assessment:

3 Li, Choh-ming. The Statistical System of Communist China. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1962.

4 Zhang Youyu 张友渔 (1898-1992) as first Vice Mayor was in charge of the city’s day-to-day operations.

Appointed in April 1949 or 1950 (verify), he was one of two vice mayors till 1957 (the other was Wu Han,

head of the Beijing branch of the Democratic League). Peng Zhen was only appointed Mayor in February

1951, and Zhang claimed that for much of the 1950s it was he who ran the city, not Peng Zhen. For more

see: Mary G. Mazur. “The United Front Redefined for the Party-State: A Case Study of Transition and

Legitimation.” in New Perspectives in State Socialism in China, edited by Timothy Cheek and Tony Saich,

66-68. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1997.

5 “BMA 002-020-000969: 2.

5

“Since there was hardly any statistical system to speak of before 1949, did

Peking manage to set one up that was actually workable? When did this

happen and how did it develop? Where were official statistics produced

and finalized? Were they used for planning purposes at different

government levels? ...What were the size and quality of the statistical

work force?”6

Within months of Zhang’s analysis, however, a second, much more fundamental

criticism of pre-1949 statistics was articulated by Li Fuchun 李富春, the deputy head of

the Central Economic and Financial Commission. This second critique did not waste time

lamenting the lack of statistical data or institutions. After all, statistical infrastructure and

activities could be established where none or little existed. Instead, this critique called for

the wholesale repudiation of existing statistical thought and practice:

In the past, China was a semi-colonial, semi-feudal country; strictly

speaking, it did not possess any statistics [worth speaking of]. Statistics in

Old China was learned from the Anglo-American bourgeoisie. This kind

of statistics cannot serve as our weapon, it is unsuitable for [the tasks of]

managing and supervising the country…we need to build [a new] statistics

for a new China…7

According to such a critique, the problem with Anglo-American bourgeois statistics was

that it served capitalists, whose sole purpose was profit via the exploitation of labor. This

argument would be developed and deployed through the rest of the decade by a whole

range of interlocutors. To cite one representative instance, a mid-1950s essay made the

case in the following way:

Bourgeois statistics exists in order to strengthen the exploitation of

workers, in order to serve the interests of capitalists; it uses unscientific

formalist mathematical doctrine to conceal the economic dangers of

capitalism, whitewash class-conflict, and deceive people. The viewpoints

6 Choh-Ming Li. “Statistics and Planning at the Hsien Level in Communist China.” The China Quarterly,

no. 9 (Jan. – Mar. 1962): 112-123. See p. 112 for quote.

7 Li Fuchun 李富春 (July 1951). Speech at the 1

st National Statistics Meeting. Li was the deputy head of

the Central Economic and Financial Commission, and prior to that had served in the Northeast.

6

and methods of such statistical theory cannot meet the needs of national

construction work and will directly endanger its progress.8

A year after Li’s dismissal of pre-1949 statistics, Vice Premier Zhu De 朱德 noted that

the establishment of a new comprehensive statistical system had already become an

important task and anyone who lacked sufficient awareness of its significance was in

error.9

How this call to arms—to set up a new statistics for a new China—was answered

is the principal subject of this dissertation. Central to the activities of early PRC

statisticians was a key question: what is the best way to ascertain social fact when you

need to count masses of things? The solution that the Chinese chose presumed the

impossibility of a universal statistical science and accepted instead a binary that

contrasted socialist with non-socialist (capitalist; bourgeois) statistics. Essential to this

distinction was the place of probabilistic theory in the study of the natural and the social

world. This dissertation uncovers the reasoning behind that choice and traces its

implications.

Statistics and tongji 统计—An Etymological Excursus

The Chinese word for statistics is a compound of two characters: tong 统, which means

“all” or “together,” and ji 计, which means to “count” or “calculate.”10

Together, tongji

8 Xu Qian 徐前 and Liu Xin 刘新 . “关于资产阶级统计理论的批判.” Tongji gongzuo tongxun, (1955.08):

28.

9 Xu Qian 徐前 and Liu Xin 刘新 . “关于资产阶级统计理论的批判.” Tongji gongzuo tongxun, (1955.08):

28.

10

Commercial Press. Xinhua zidian—hanyying shuangjie 新华字典—汉英双解 (Xinhua Dictionary with

English Translation). Beijing: Commercial Press, 2000, p. 287, 652.

7

统计 is thus defined as the “collection, sorting, calculation, and analysis of numerical

data associated with a given phenomenon,” or more simply as “summary calculation” 总

括地计算.11

This is, of course, a relatively recent definition. The Hanyu dacidian

(Unabridged Dictionary of Sinitic) lists instances of its use in this context as early as the

Ming dynasty (CE 1368-1644). Explicit links between tongji and statecraft, however, do

not appear to have been made at that time. Instead, it is the word kuaiji 会计 (accounting)

that was the standard word for talking about numbers and statecraft through much of

Chinese history. As several scholars have contended, in ancient and late imperial China

the relationship between numbers and statecraft was captured in the statement, “[if]

accounting is proper [correct], [then] it is already enough [and governance will be

effective].”12

The phrase can be found in The Mencius, purportedly uttered by Confucius

when he was a minor official in charge of warehousing 委吏. At least one Chinese

statistician has made the case that the phrase’s invocation through succeeding dynasties

ought to be considered evidence of the importance accorded to proper statistical work in

Chinese history.13

The rise of statistics as a modern discipline in China, however, is frequently

traced to the work of Roger Hart at the Chinese Maritime Customs Bureau during the late

nineteenth century.14

Hart’s understanding of statistics was informed by its evolution

11

“指对某一现象有关的数据的搜集、整理、计算和分析等.” See Hanyu dacidian Press. Hanyu

dacidian—di jiu juan 汉语大词典—第九卷. Beiing: Hanyu dacidian Press, p. 846

12

“孔子嘗為委吏矣，曰『會計當而已矣』.” See: Mencius, Wan Zhang—II 孟子—万章下. Accessed at

the Chinese Text Project: http://ctext.org/mengzi/wan-zhang-ii

13

See: Yu Yue 于越. “会计当而已矣.” Tongji yanjiu 统计研究, (1986.01): 74.

14

Andrea Br ard. “Robert Hart and China’s Statistical Revolution.” Modern Asian Studies, 40, no. 3

(2006): 605–629. In Chapter II, I provide an overview of pre-1949 statistics in China.

8

within a European context. In the English language, the word statistics is usually traced to

French (statistique) and German (Statistik) antecedents dating from the mid-eighteenth

century. In both the French and German cases, the word originally referred to “the study

of the state, of statecraft, or of the conditions, circumstances, and politics of a state, the

study of numerical data concerning society.”15

Prior to the adoption of statistics, the term

that incorporated a similar meaning in English was “political arithmetic,” which is

credited to the seventeenth century English economist William Petty.16

An understanding

that also incorporated “techniques of mathematical interpretation applied to phenomena

for which an exhaustive study of all data is impractical,” i.e. probability theory, took

nearly another century to make an appearance.17

In China, this modern understanding of

statistics was denoted by tongji, which reappeared as a “return graphic loan:” a “Kanji”

term derived from Classical Chinese and used in Japanese to translate modern European

words that was subsequently reimported into modern Chinese in the nineteenth century.18

Both these definitions of tongji/statistics—the one that links statistics to statecraft and the

other that is primarily mathematical in nature—and the different ways in which they were

perceived in the early People’s Republic are central to the arguments of this dissertation.

15

See, for instance, entries for statistic and statistics in the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford

University Press. (Online edition)

16

For more on Petty and political arithmetic, see: Ted McCormick 2009. William Petty: And the Ambitions

of Political Arithmetic. Oxford: Oxford University Press

17 Oxford English Dictionary (Online Edition). The latter mathematical definition was first recorded in

English in 1843.

18

Lydia H. Liu. Translingual Practice—Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity, 1900-

1937. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995, 302 (fn), 338.

9

An “Impossible Dream”

In 1974, Leo Orleans, then the China Research Specialist at the Library of Congress,

wrote a short article pithily entitled “Chinese Statistics: The Impossible Dream.”19

Whether he was inspired by 1972’s Man of La Mancha and Peter O’Toole’s haunted

rendition of the famous song cannot be known.20

But his description of Chinese statistics

as “notorious” and the Chinese as a “nation that does not value accuracy” suggest he may

very well have. As he noted in the article:

The contention here is that this is not the case, but that in fact, the Chinese

themselves lack much of the statistical data we so desperately seek and

that their traditional nonchalance toward accuracy in statistics persists

among many of the people presently responsible for record-keeping.21

For long, the study of modern China consistently presented a paradox to the China

specialist, to whom data was rarely made available.22

As the economist Thomas Rawski

noted in a recent review of scholarship on China’s economy: “The common method

underlying these studies, particularly those focused on the People’s Republic, was the use

19

Leo A. Orleans. “Chinese Statistics: The Impossible Dream” The American Statistician, May, 28, no. 2

(May 1974): 47-52.

20 The movie was based on the eponymous 1965 Broadway musical, which in turn was adapted from the

non-musical 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote. The original inspiration for all of these works was, of course,

Miguel de Cervantes’ seventeenth century The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (El

ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha). The musical and movie are both famous for the song

“Impossible Dream,” in which Don Quixote expounds on his quest and knightly duties.

21

Orleans 1974: 47.

And consider the opening lines of the song:

To dream ... the impossible dream ...

To fight ... the unbeatable foe ...

To bear ... with unbearable sorrow ...

To run ... where the brave dare not go ...

To right ... the unrightable wrong ...

To love ... pure and chaste from afar ...

To try ... when your arms are too weary ...

To reach ... the unreachable star ...

22

Throughout the 1950s and the ensuing decades, statistics in the PRC remained a state secret.

10

of fragmentary data to reconstruct the broader economic landscape. This approach arose

from the paucity of systematic data prior to 1949 and from the limited publication of

economic statistics under the People’s Republic until the appearance of the China

Statistics Yearbook [《中国统计年鉴》] in 1981.”23

As a result, each occasion when the

Chinese released data (e.g. census numbers in 1954, Ten Great Years in 1959, production

figures in 1970) generated tremendous excitement.24

And so, one gets the impossible dream of the China scholar tilting at the

proverbial windmill of Chinese data. To abuse another metaphor, for many decades,

statistics from the People’s Republic of China were treated like gold dust: near

impossible to obtain, but with the additional (and often justifiable) fear that they were the

product of alchemy—any moment one may discover what one held in one’s hands was

dust alright, but hardly gold. Orleans explained the frustrations of the China watchers by

noting: “Never having known the advantages (and, yes, the frustrations) of a good

statistical base, they [the Chinese] don’t miss it nearly as much as do many of us who

look at China from the outside.”25

The mainstream response in the West to the problem of Chinese data has been

characterized by a tendency to not take Chinese statistics from the Mao years too

23

Thomas G. Rawski. “Studies of China’s Economy.” In A Scholarly Review of Chinese Studies in North

America, 175. Asia Past & Present: New Research from AAS, 2013.

24

For a sense of the surprise and skepticism generated by the 1953 Census numbers, see John S. Aird.

“China’s Population, Census and Vital Statistics.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 56

(1961): 443; John S. Aird. “Estimating China’s Population.” The Annals of the American Academy of

Political and Social Science 369 (1967): 67-72; John S. Aird. “Sources of Demographic Data on Mainland

China.” American Sociological Review 24, no. 5 (1959): 623-630; Ansley J. Coale. Rapid Population

Change in China 1952-1982. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1984; G.B. Cressey. “The 1953

Census of China.” The Far Eastern Quarterly 14, no. 3 (1955): 387-388. On the 1970 production figures,

see: Orleans 1974: 51

25

Orleans 1974: 47

11

seriously. The two extant book-length studies on PRC statistics exhibit this tendency, but

in contrasting fashions. The first study was produced by the economist Li Choh-Ming in

the early 1960s and the second by the anthropologist Liu Xin much more recently. Li was

primarily invested in gauging the accuracy of statistical data produced in the early PRC

and in explaining the statistical failure associated with the famine of 1959-1961.26

Liu’s

more recent anthropological study has focused on the transition from Maoist subjective

mass science to objective science after 1978.27

If the latter paints the entire Mao period

from 1949 to 1978 with the broad brush of subjective mass science, then the former tends

to neglect the scientific basis for the design of statistical work during the 1950s, blaming

its collapse largely on the Great Leap Forward of 1958. In this dissertation, I complicate

both these analyses. I demonstrate that the picture within the PRC during its first decade

was one of data richness and a great degree of professional engagement and deliberation.

While public access to data may have been limited, the 1950s witnessed a veritable

explosion in data collection, management, and analysis.

Statistics and Big Data Positivism

To know something through numbers remains one of the most powerful ways of knowing

in the modern world. Powerful not because it is necessarily or always nearer the truth

(were we to grant the singularity of such a thing), but powerful because it offers a tool of

persuasion and a basis for rational, methodical, calibrated, and repeatable action that

26

Li 1962a.

27

Xin Liu. The Mirage of China: Anti-Humanism, Narcissism, and Corporeality of the Contemporary

World. New York: Berghahn Books, 2009.

12

remains unmatched.28

Such power has become all-the-more desirable as we have come to

realize that common-sense understandings of the world are often erroneous. 29

It is for

these reasons that quantification has gained such traction over the past few centuries. Our

current all-pervasive zeal for Big Data is symptomatic of this general impetus to quantify.

But such enthusiasm for quantification is not especially new. By my count, since

the nineteenth century we have experienced at least three major waves of quantitative

positivism. The first of these was during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,

when the use of numbers to produce actionable knowledge in society received a major

boost through the activities of Francis Galton and Karl Pearson.30

The ethos—confidence

in quantitative analysis—that drove Galton, Pearson, and their contemporaries can

arguably be traced to Auguste Comte and his mid-nineteenth century work on

positivism.31

This first major wave of quantitative positivism gave rise to disciplines such

as statistics, demography, and sociology.

The second major wave of quantitative positivism was in the 1950s, the period of

time that this dissertation focuses on. In chapters III and VIII I provide a more systematic

treatment of the promise of post-war statistics. For now, I would like to stress that the

belief that any problem could be remedied and diagnosed as long as enough data was

collected pervaded not just the world of science, social science, and governance, but was

rather a part of the very zeitgeist itself. This faith, for that is what it was, is perhaps most

28

Ted Porter. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princton: Princton

University Press, 1996.

29

On this, see for instance: Duncan Watts. Everything Is Obvious*: *Once You Know the Answer. Crown

Business, 2011.

30

Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 1985.

31

Auguste Comte. A general view of positivism [Discours sur l'Esprit positif 1844] London, 1856

13

vividly captured in Isaac Asimov’s 1940s and 1950s Foundation Series of science-fiction

novels.32

In the series, the “psychohistorian” Hari Seldon, calculates that the Galactic

Empire is in terminal decline and the galaxy will slowly unravel into a long period of

chaos. Seldon performs this analysis by using the science of psychohistory, a field that he

developed from “a set of vague axioms” to “a profound statistical science.” A neologism

coined by Asimov, psychohistory combined history, psychology, sociology, and

mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future of large masses of

people: “The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reactions of human mobs,

Seldon found, could be treated statistically. The larger the mob, the greater the accuracy

that could be achieved.”33

Enthusiasm for quantitative positivism clearly was not just

limited to the domain of stuffy debates about policy and economics.

And yet, even if the 1950s were a moment of pervasive big data positivism, such

positivism manifested itself in more than one way. As this dissertation will demonstrate,

the dreams of Big Data in China were theoretically and substantially different from those

in the West or in places like India. Chinese statisticians in the early PRC categorically

rejected the role of probabilistic thinking in the social world and favored counting things

exhaustively.

32

Isaac Asimov Asimov, Isaac. The Foundation Trilogy. London: The Folio Society, 2012. The nine stories

that comprise the Foundation trilogy were originally published serially in the science fiction magazine

Astounding over an eight year period in the 1940s. They were recompiled into three volumes in the early

1950s.

33

Asimov was clearly applying the law of large numbers to prospective large scale human action.

Elsewhere in the series, he wrote: “The laws of Psychohistory are statistical in nature and are rendered

invalid if the actions of individual men are not random in nature. If a sizable group of human beings

learned of key details of the Plan, their actions would be governed by that knowledge and would no longer

be random in the meaning of the axioms of Psychohistory. In other words, they would no longer be

perfectly predictable.”

14

In a somewhat ironic twist, our current wave of Big Data positivism, the third in

my reckoning, has witnessed the return of the dream of total information, though

unsurprisingly it is also accompanied by legitimate fears about the growth of the all-

powerful and all-seeing state and corporation.

Engaging Fields

As the first historical study of the development of statistical science in modern China,

this dissertation fills a critical gap in our general understanding of contemporary Chinese

history. I draw inspiration from work on the history of science and social science in

China and elsewhere, the growing scholarship on the history of post-1949 China, as well

as recent trends in global history. Scholarship on the history of science in modern China

has persuasively demonstrated modern China’s active participation in globally evolving

social and political technologies. These studies have, however, tended to focus either on

the Republican years (CE 1911-1949) or on the post-reform era (CE 1978- ), leaving the

first few decades of the PRC relatively under-explored.34

Building on these studies, my

research situates itself in the growing subfield of scholarship on 1950s China. Among the

earliest arguments against understanding 1949 as a moment of rupture was the work of

William Kirby.35

In more recent years, no longer hostage to Cold War geo-politics and

34

See, for instance: Yung-chen Chiang. Social Engineering and the Social Sciences in China, 1919-1949.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001; Susan Greenhalgh. Just One Child—Science and Policy in

Deng's China. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2008; Ruth Rogaski. Hygienic Modernity: meanings of

health and disease in treaty-port China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004; Paul B. Trescott.

Jingji Xue: The History of the Introduction of Western Economic Ideas into China, 1850-1950. Hong Kong:

Chinese University Press, 2007.; and Tong Lam. A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction

of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900–1949. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

35

William C. Kirby. “Continuity and Change in Modern China: Chinese Economic Planning on the

Mainland and on Taiwan, 1943-1958.” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 24 (July 1990): 121-141.

15

disciplinary or temporal boundaries, and spurred by the increasing openness of local

archives, historians have offered new perspectives on the early PRC.36

While some have

further facilitated a reassessment of 1949 as a rupture,37

others have investigated aspects

of the transition to Communist rule, exploring subjects such as marriage, gender relations,

skill and rural industries, urban transformations, film, urban outcasts, and much else.38

History of science, in particular socialist mass science, has also begun to receive much

well-deserved attention.39

This dissertation is also informed by the rich history of science literature on

statistics and quantification in the pre-twentieth century world.40

Equally significant are

36

Julia Strauss ed. “The History of the People's Republic of China, 1949-1976.” The China Quarterly

Special Issue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. See, in particular, Strauss’ introduction to the

volume.

37

Xiabo Lü and Elizabeth Perry, eds. Danwei: the Changing Chinese Workplace in Historical and

Comparative Perspective. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1997; and Strauss 2007.

38

See: Neil J. Diamant. Revolutionizing the Family—Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural

China, 1949–1968. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000; Jacob Eyferth. Eating Rice from

Bamboo Roots—The Social History of a Community of Handicraft Papermakers in Rural Sichuan, 1920–

2000. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008; James Z. Gao. The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou:

The Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949–1954. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004; Gail

Hershatter. The Gender of Memory—Rural Women and China’s Collective Past. Berkeley: University of

California Press, 2011; Paul G. Pickowics and Jeremy Brown, eds. Dilemmas of Victory--The Early Years

of the People's Republic of China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007; Aminda Smith. Thought

Reform and China's Dangerous Classes Reeducation, Resistance, and the People. Rowman and Littlefield,

2013; and Strauss 2007.

39

See: Focus: Science in Modern China. Isis 8, no. 5. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007; Thomas

Mullaney, Thomas. Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2011; and Sigrid Schmalzer. The People’s Peking Man: Popular Science

and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

40

See, for instance: Lorraine Daston. Classical Probability in the Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1988; Alain Desrosières. The Politics of Large Numbers—History of Statistical

Reasoning. Translated by Camille Naish. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998; Ian Hacking.

“Biopower and the Avalanche of Printed Numbers.” Humanities in Society 5 (1982): 279–95; Ian Hacking.

The Taming of Chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; Ian Hacking . “Making up People.”

(Essay based on “Tenth Annual British Academy Lecture” of April 2006; the full text of this talk will

appear in the Proceedingsof the B.A.) London Review of Books, (17 August 2006): 7-11; Lorenz Krüger,

Lorraine J. Daston, and Michael Heidelberger, eds. The Probabilistic Revolution - Vol. 1: Ideas in History.

Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987; Silvana Patriarca.Numbers and Nationhood: Writings Statistics in

Nineteenth-Century Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; Mary Poovey. A History of the

16

the works of sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and social theorists who

have investigated various aspects of knowledge creation, scientific research, state-power,

and the role of numbers in such processes.41

Finally, my focus on the mobilization of new

technologies in the service of new governance agendas in a global setting goes hand-in-

hand with the wider turn away from Cold War paradigms. The Sino-Indian statistical

exchanges of the 1950s remind us that experimentation and innovation took place in

many contexts after 1945. Such transnational flows of ideas, information, practices, and

people draw attention to reciprocal linkages across places during a century in which

cooperation between governments, organizations, and individual researchers was the

norm, and not the exception.42

Organization

The dissertation is divided into three substantive parts and seven chapters. The three

chapters in Part I, “A Crisis in Counting,” explore what was new about statistics in the

Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1998; Theodore M. Porter. The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900. Princeton, Princeton

University Press, 1986; and Theodore M. Porter 1994. “Chance Subdued by Science.” Poetics Today 15:3

(Fall 1994): 467-478.

41

See, for instance: William Alonso and Paul Starr, eds. The Politics of Numbers. New York: Russell Sage

Foundation, 1987; Bernard Cohn. An Anthropologist among Historians. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1990; Michel Foucault. “Governmentality.” In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, edited by

G Burchell, C Gordon and P Miller. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1981; Greenhalgh 2008; Bruno Latour.

Science in Action, How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1987; Donald A. MacKenzie. An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape

Markets. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006; Timothy Mitchell. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics,

Modernity. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2002; James C. Scott. Seeing Like a State: How Certain

Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998; and

James C. Scott. The Art of Not Being Governed—An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New

Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.

42

See, for instance: Matthew Connelly. Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population.

Cambridge: Belknap (Harvard University Press), 2008; and Akira Iriye. “Internationalizing International

History.” In Rethinking American History in the Global Age, edited by Thomas Bender, 48-60. Ewing, NJ:

University of California Press, 2002.

17

People’s Republic after 1949. Chapter II, “Revolutionary Statistics in the Early 1950s,”

explores early statistical work in the PRC’s Northeast, arguing that this work and the

practical experience so gained was the foundation upon which the rest of the country’s

statistical apparatus was based. The establishment of socialist statistical work thus

preceded its theoretical and ideological justification, which then becomes the subject of

Chapter III: “Lies, Damned Lies, and (Bourgeois) Statistics: Ascertaining Social Fact.”

The Chapter also provides an assessment of Soviet technical aid and of the Soviet

statistical experts who were instrumental to the organization of statistical activity in the

PRC. Chapter IV, “No “Mean” Solution: The Reformulation of Statistical Science,”

explores how this new understanding of statistics became dominant in the 1950s and how

it affected the valuation of key concepts and methods.

Taken together, the three chapters in Part I return us to an important issue in early

PRC history: that of understanding the extent to which the shift to Communist rule after

1949 was a rupture, and tracing the continuities that persisted nevertheless. Statistics

exhibits elements of both rupture and continuity, depending on our time-frame as well as

geographic focus. A closer look at the statistical activities in the Northeast produces a

strong case for substantial rupture—new statistical methods and practices were

introduced under the direction of Soviet experts and quickly became extensive. The

picture for the rest of the China till 1952 is much less clear. Thus, in these early years the

rupture appears regionally determined.

In contrasting fashion, statistical education continued unchanged during these first

two to three years. Many academic statisticians maintained their positions after 1949 and

were involved in the training of statistical workers. It was only in 1951, and more

18

properly after 1952, that a concerted effort was mounted to redefine statistics, both by

changing the curriculum, and through targeted criticisms of well-established statisticians

and their textbooks. Changes in practice thus preceded changes in education and

academic discourse. Such findings help us rethink 1949 not as a singular moment of

rupture but instead call for the separation of the rhetoric of rupture (promoted by the CCP)

from the actual changes on the ground, which were temporally and regionally variegated.

The three chapters in Part II, “Statistical State, Quantified Society,” focus on

statistics in practice, thereby tracing some of the implications of the theoretical, scientific,

and administrative decisions investigated in Part I. Chapter V, “The Nature of Statistical

Work,” draws upon materials from the Beijing Municipal Archives, including various

statistical reports generated across all levels of the statistical system, internal bulletins of

work, and materials from conferences of statistical workers (at local, provincial, and

national levels), to explore the messiness (contra the idealization unpacked in Chapter II)

of actual statistical work. It captures not just the centralizing impetus of the expansion,

but also the varieties of challenges that were encountered in putting into practice the

methods that were at the heart of socialist statistics: (1) the periodical report system 定期

报表制度, and (2) various forms of typical sampling 典型调查. Even though

acknowledgement of the problem of excess issuing of reports 滥发报表 and the chaos

they generated had been present since before 1949, the problem became increasingly

ominous through the 1950s, fueled in part by a table-as-product rationale, which is

explored in Chapter VI: “To “Ardently Love Statistical Work”: State (In) capacity,

Professionalization, and their Discontents.” This chapter analyzes the variety of

stratagems—training, supplementary training, self-study, motivation, and reward—that

19

were employed to professionalize and maintain a cadre of statistical workers that

numbered as high as 200,000 by 1956. The final chapter in Part II, “Statistical State,

Quantified Society,” investigates the uses and reception of statistics through two case

studies: economic planning and the institution of the work-points system in the rural

countryside.

Part III consists of one chapter, “The Turn to India: Sino-Indian Statistical

Exchanges, 1951-1959.” By the 1950s, India had become one of the centers of global

innovation in statistical technology. And starting as early as 1951, and with increasing

urgency after 1956, Chinese and Indian statisticians traded visits as they sought to learn

from each other’s experiences. At the heart of these exchanges was the desire to learn

more about mathematical statistics, in particular the then cutting-edge statistical method

of random sampling. Involving such key figures as the deputy director of the SSB, Wang

Sihua 王思华 and the Indian statistician P.C. Mahalanobis, the unearthing of these

exchanges forces a reappraisal of Cold-War paradigms and sets out in stark relief the

extent to which Chinese statisticians and leaders clearly understood the strengths and

shortcomings of their own statistical system.

The Epilogue, “A Great Leap in Statistics,” traces very briefly the impact and

legacy of an “on-the-spot meeting” 现场会议 in the city of Baoding 保定 in the summer

of 1958 that was organized to discuss a Great Leap Forward in statistics. Over the

ensuing months, the tussle between socialist statistics and its alternatives was largely

overwhelmed by Maoist mass science. In statistics this meant the rebadging and

valorization of typical sampling, which was now explained as Mao’s synthesis of

Marxist–Leninist theory with the practice of revolution in China. Mao’s 1927 Report on

20

the Peasant Movement in Hunan became the foundational text for this ‘revolutionary’

method. It is this notion of mass science, with its anti-expertise and anti-

professionalization, that has come to inform our understanding of much of the Mao era.

But as this dissertation demonstrates, the picture till 1958 was quite different, far more

contested, and open to very different paths.

21

PART I

A CRISIS IN COUNTING

22

CHAPTER II

Revolutionary Statistics in the Early 1950s

23

In July 1950, Wang Sihua 王思华, recently designated head of the Northeast Statistical

Bureau (NSB), proudly declared to his audience that not only were they participating in

the first meeting of statistical workers in the Northeast’s history, but that their meeting

was also the largest in the nation’s history.43

This was clear evidence, according to him,

that New China was already on the path towards achieving a planned economy; for no

planned economy could be possible without the presence of scientific statistical work. In

his address, Wang observed that since the promulgation of the “Decision Regarding

Strengthening Statistical Work” on 10 April 1950, statistical work had entered a “new

phase.”44

As a result, “statistical work in the northeast had begun to move from a state of

decentralization to integration, from chaos to the correct path, from the non-scientific to

the scientific.” Wang explained that help offered by Soviet experts was critical to this

change. The Soviet Union possessed over thirty years of experience and it was their

expertise and aid that allowed Wang to declare: “We have set up a statistical system, we

possess method, [and] we possess confidence.”45

A few years later, in December 1952, while addressing the third annual meeting

of the Northeast Statistical Bureau, Wang was even more emphatic. Over the previous

three years, he would claim, the bureau had successfully established “a new type of

43

Wang Sihua. “Tongji gongzuo the renwu 统计工作的任务 (The Tasks of Statistical Work).” In Tongji

gongzuo—di yi xuanji 统计工作—第一选集 (Statistical Work—The First Anthology), 7-14. Shenyang:

Northeast Statistical Press, February 1952. A slightly edited version of this address was included in a

collection of Wang’s works published in 1986. See: Wang Sihua. Wang Sihua tongji lunwenji 王思华统计

论文集 (Collected Statistical Works of Wang Sihua). Beijing: China Statistics Press, 1986, 1-14.

44

Wang Sihua 1952: 7. For a text of the decision, see “Guanyu jiaqiang tongji gongzuo de jueding 关于加

强统计工作的决定 (Decision Regarding Strengthening Statistical Work).” In In Tongji gongzuo—di yi

xuanji 统计工作—第一选集 (Statistical Work—The First Anthology), 127. Shenyang: Northeast Statistical

Press, 1951.02.

45

Wang Sihua 1952: 8.

24

standardized statistical work” 新型正规化的统计工作.46

For him, such standardized

statistical work was the hallmark of socialist countries and was fundamentally different

from the statistics of capitalist countries. It was also different from the older small- scale,

handicraft-like practices of conducting the odd statistical survey common in the pre-49

years.47

At the time Wang delivered the latter speech, a national bureau of statistics (The

State Statistics Bureau; 国家统计局) had recently been set up in Beijing and, as will be

described in Part II of the dissertation, the rapid expansion of a national network of

statistical offices and personnel at provincial, county, and village levels was underway.

As the first statistical agency in the PRC to fully incorporate Soviet/socialist approaches

to statistics, the Northeast Statistical Bureau became the model for this rapid expansion.48

46

Wang Sihua. “San nian lai dongbei tongjiju gongzuo zongjie 三年来东北统计局工作总结 (Summary of

Statistical Work Performed by the Northeast Statistical Bureau over the Past Three Years).” Tongji

gongzuo—di wu xuanji 统计工作—第五选集 (Statistical Work—Fifth Anthology), Northeast Finance and

Economics Press, January 1953, 1-10. An edited version was published in Wang’s collected works; see:

Wang Sihua 1986: 31-49.

47

Wang Sihua 1953: 3.

48

Oral history interview with Wu Cangping 乌沧萍 (1922- ), Beijing, 11 March 2011. Wu, a demographer

and statistician was trained in the West before being invited back by the Communist government in the

early 1950s. Offered a position at People’s University, he was active in demographic research and was a

member of the four-man team that visited India in late 1956. Since the 1980s he has been among the

pioneers in the field of gerontology in China.

For the Northeast’s distinctiveness and prototypical qualities in the early PRC more generally, see The

Cambridge History of China, 14, part 1 (The People’s Republic), 82-83: “The outstanding case of regional

particularity was the Northeast…it reflected the fact that the Northeast was the most advanced region and

served as a bellwether for the rest of the country for a number of reasons. First, having benefited from

industrialization under Japanese rule, the Northeast had the most developed economic base. It provided 34%

of China’s industrial output in 1949 and 52% in 1952. Second, by virtue of being the first region totally

liberated, the Northeast could move more quickly toward comprehensive policies and was able to begin

regional planning by 1950. And finally, proximity to the Soviet Union and Soviet holdings in the regional

railroads and the port of Luta (Port Arthur-Dairen) combined to provide easy access to Soviet aid and

influence. Thus the northeast instituted Soviet methods of economic management, albeit with difficulty due

to shortages of skilled personnel, and these methods were generally endorsed by the central leadership in

Peking for extension to China as a whole.”

25

Under Wang’s leadership, the Bureau had not only carried out statistical work since early

1950, but also undertook the first major attempt at translating and publishing Soviet

treatises on statistical theory and methods.49

The NSB’s activities had a seminal impact not just on the ways in which

statistical work was organized and carried out, but also on the very definition of statistics,

itself. By valorizing the Soviet Union’s ‘advanced experience,’ debates within China

starting as early as 1950 came to reformulate statistics as a social science in

contradistinction to a natural or universal science. This science’s function lay in helping

build a socialist society. As a result, the new statistics stood bifurcated—rhetorically and

substantively—from what was labeled the tainted, bourgeois, and socially unproductive

pursuit of mathematical statistics. Statistical work, first most notably in the northeast

under Wang Sihua, and then progressively elsewhere, followed suit. By 1952, these

changes began to be implemented within statistical education as part of a general

reorganization of the higher education system.

And yet, in studies of PRC statistics, this early period garners almost no attention.

Li Choh-Ming, one of the first scholars to focus his attention on the question of statistics

in the PRC, was dismissive of these initial years. As he wrote in 1961, “from 1949 to

1952 no effort was made to develop a statistical system national in scope.”50

This

emphasis on a national system led him to begin his longer book-length study on PRC

statistics not with the founding of the PRC in 1949, nor with statistical activities in the

49

For more see: Liu Chang 刘畅 and Zhang Yun 张云. Ershi shiji zhongguo de tongjixue 二十世纪中国

的统计学 (Statistical Education in 20th

Century China). Beijing: Dangjian duwu chubanshe, 2000, 118.

50

Choh-Ming Li. “Communist China’s Statistical System: 1949-1957.” The American Economic Review,

51, no. 2 (Papers and Proceedings of the Seventy-Third Annual Meeting of the American Economic

Association) (May 1961): 499-517 (quote from 500).

26

Northeast, but with the founding of the State Statistics Bureau in Beijing on August 8

1952. To be fair, Li did recognize the Northeast as the only region capable of producing

reliable statistical data prior to 1952, and he also acknowledged the early presence of

Soviet statisticians in the Ministries of Railways (1950) and Health (1951-52).51

But,

aside from this somewhat perfunctory acknowledgement, his approach only took

seriously statistical activities national in scale, which were only made possible after the

formation of the SSB in 1952.52

As this chapter will demonstrate, the early period of 1949-1952 is crucial to

understanding statistics and statistical work through the decade that followed. Unpacking

the constituent elements of Wang’s ‘new type of standardized statistical work,’ will

permit an articulation of the ways in which it was regarded as more standardized, correct,

and scientific than what preceded it in the years before 1949. At the same time, the

chapter also seeks to complicate the neat binary that Chinese (and Soviet) statisticians

liked to deploy—of socialist and bourgeois statistics, of pre-liberation and post-liberation

statistics. I will show that in the case of the PRC this binary understanding is incomplete.

The 1950s were shot through with the influence, rarely pedagogical or technical in nature

but rather all-pervasive and methodological, of what could be termed the Maoist model of

ascertaining fact. This Maoist model, with its emphasis on direct experience over

technical knowledge or ideological fervor as a source of expertise, made the earlier

binary and the clean solutions it offered much more conflicted. As a result, statisticians

and statistical workers through the 1950s found themselves not just transitioning from a 51

Choh-Ming Li 1962a: 7-8.

52

Writing a little over 10 years later, Leo A. Orleans would echo this assessment: “The responsibility of

standardizing and centralizing all statistical work in the county was finally vested in the State Statistical

Bureau in August of 1952.” Orleans 1974: 50.

27

‘non-socialist’ to a ‘socialist’ system of data collection and analysis, but also operating in

a milieu that particularly valued personal individual practical experience.

Statistics in China before 1949

In September 1947, Washington, D.C. played host to the twenty-fifth meeting of the

International Statistical Institute’s biannual conference.53

China was well represented at

the nearly two-week long event. The Director of Statistics of the National Government,

Jennings P. Chu (朱君毅 Zhu Junyi, 1892-1963), led a six-member delegation

representing a variety of fields and specializations within and outside the government. Of

the six members, two were already stationed in Washington, D.C.: D.K. Lieu (Liu Dajun

劉大釣, 1890-1962) was the Commercial Counselor at the Chinese Embassy as well as

the Chinese Representative on the United Nations Statistical Commission, and Alfred

Bangnee Liu (Liu Pengnian 刘彭年, 1901-?) was the Director of the Chinese News

Service. These three men were joined by the well-known sociologist, demographer, and

Tsinghua University professor, Chen Da (Ta Ch’en 陈达, 1892-1975), who had traveled

from Beijing; by the Shanghai-based Director of the Accounting Department of the

Central Bank of China, Kuo-Pao King (Jin Guobao 金国宝, 1893-1963); and by the Head

of the Department of Mathematics of the National Central University in Nanjing, Pei-

Ching Tang (唐培经 Tang Peijing, 1903-1988).54

Born in the late Qing, some of the

53

The names are listed in: Introduction—International Statistical Conferences, September 6-18, 1947,

Washington, D.C.— Proceedings of the International Statistical Conference, Volume I. Calcutta: Alka

Press, 1951, 42. (Hereafter PISC) Also see: Liu Chang and Zhang Yun 2000: 70.

54

Among them, three delivered papers: Chu delivered a paper titled “The Independently Controlled

Statistical System of the Chinese Government”; King delivered a paper titled “A Census of Nine Hsien in

28

members had benefited from Boxer Indemnity fellowships and received education in the

United States, while others had been trained nearer home in Japan. Some had conducted

and published research using statistical data and methods, while others had written

textbooks and been involved in the administration of statistical work across China. They

were each exposed to contemporary social and scientific theories, and, to a large extent,

their approaches reflected the dynamic and varied characteristics of the world of social

science research and statistical activity during the first half of the 20th

century in China. It

was this world and its intellectual and administrative traditions that Wang Sihua, Li

Fuchun, and Zhu De forcefully rejected in the early 1950s.

The dynamism and variety in the world of Chinese social science research in the

first half of the twentieth century was itself the outcome, at least partially, of an intense

search for the causes and remedies for China’s relative political, economic, and military

weakness on the world stage. As a once-powerful empire had transitioned into a weak

republic, elites (intellectuals, administrators, and the like) had to contend with what they

saw as the long shadow of enduring imperial practices and traditions. Enfolded in this

long shadow were the twin practices of statecraft and data collection.

The Qing (1644-1911) state had routinely gathered information on prices, rainfall,

salt, grain holdings, famine, and population.55

In 1793, five years before Malthus

Szechwan, China,” and Chen Da delivered a paper titled “Factors of Urban Growth in China.” For

additional details, see: PISC, Volume I: 75-76; 78-79; and 94 respectively, and Volume II: 92-97; 167-185.

55

See: Li 2007. Mention can also be made of the decimal based Lijia 里甲 and Baojia 保甲 systems (with

their origins in Song during the life of Wang Anshi 王安石 (C.E. 1021-1086), though Qing methods

probably cannot be traced further back than the early Ming (C.E. 1368-1644) population censuses, fish

registers, and so on. In general, barring central projects like the Grand Canal and famine relief, public

services and local security were handled at the local or regional level. For the kinds of tensions this

generated in the fiscal structure during the High Qing, and the attendant reforms that were attempted, see:

Madeleine Zelin. The Magistrate’s Tael: Rationalizing Fiscal Reform in Eighteenth Century Ch'ing

China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

29

published his famous tract, the Qing official Hong Liangji 洪亮吉 (1746-1809) had

already raised the specter of unchecked population growth, thereby challenging the

deeply rooted theory that population increase reflected good governance.56

Towards the

end of the Qing, increasing incapacity forced the state to give up on attempts to quantify

and collect information. During this same period, heightened interest in Western

knowledge forms set off an enduring debate among Chinese elites on the ‘usefulness’ of

Western knowledge in contrast to the ‘essence’ embodied in Chinese learning.57

As a

result, institutions such as the Jiangnan Arsenal devoted considerable resources to the

translation of Western tracts, including treatises on statecraft that included some

statistical analysis.58

The advent of ‘modern’ statistics in China can, arguably, be traced

to the 1859 publication of the first Maritime Customs Report.59

By the turn of the century,

56

“China’s Population Problem,” in: Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. 2, edited by. William Theodore de

Bary and Richard Lufrano, 174-76. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. In similar fashion,

William Rowe has demonstrated that the nineteenth century statecraft thinker and agrarian reformer, Bao

Shichen (1775-1855), made national estimates of crop yield and population and dabbled in statistical ideas

about state output, future economic and fiscal policies, and conceptions of state income. William T. Rowe.

“ Bao Shichen (1775-1855), an Early Nineteenth-Century Agrarian Reformer.” Unpublished paper

delivered at the Modern China Seminar, Columbia University, New York, December 15 2012. Available

here: http://krieger.jhu.edu/east-asian/documents/Rowe_Seminar_Paper.pdf

57

Formulated in Chinese as ti-yong (体-用; Western learning for its usefulness, Chinese learning for its

essence), the seemingly instrumental use of Western knowledge to strengthen an increasingly weak China

polarized Chinese intellectuals. For the translator and editor Yan Fu (严复, 1854-1921), without a broader

engagement with Western civilization and its political and scientific forms, such an attempt was bound to

fail. Others, such as the scholar Feng Guifen (冯桂芬; 1809-1874), held that all China need in order to

compete on level terms were the material products of Western civilization.

58

Benjamin Elman. On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550-1900. Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 2005, 331-334. Among the examples that Elman cites was the Chinese translation of Henry

Fawcett’s A Manual of Political Economy: Fuoguo ce 夫国策. For a digital copy of the book, see:

http://www.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/encyc/Fuguo_ce/index.htm

59

D.K. Lieu 刘大钧 (Liu Dajun). “Statistical Work in China.” Presented at the Nineteenth Session of the

International Statistical Institute, Tokyo, Japan, 1930, 3. On statistics at the Maritime Customs Bureau and

the role of Robert Hart, see: Andrea Br ard. “Robert Hart and China’s Statistical Revolution.” Modern

Asian Studies, 40, no. 3 (2006): 605–629. On the development of statistics and the translation of

mathematical and statistical works in the nineteenth century, see: Andrea Br ard and Wang Youjun 王幼军.

“Tongjixue zai jindai zhongguo de yanbian—cong shehui tongji dao shuli tongji 统计学在近代中国的 演

30

the Qing civil service exam system had begun to incorporate questions drawn from the

modern social sciences and mathematics.60

Subsequent reforms announced in 1905

signaled changes that included plans for representative constitutional government and a

modern census.61

The fall of the Qing in 1911, while aborting those reforms, helped accelerate the

spread of nascent Western social sciences and witnessed attempts at new forms of

governance and state-building. A number of Chinese received training as demographers,

sociologists, anthropologists, and ethnographers, usually in the West or Japan, and began

to work for the Chinese state and collaborate on data collection with Western institutions

and scholars. No longer understood purely through an Impact-Response framework,

recent research into their activities has stressed the level of hybridity—drawing upon

their Western education, but also deeply cognizant of local realities and traditions— that

these social scientists achieved in their research.62

Through the ensuing decades of the

1920s and 1930s there emerged what Tong Lam has identified as a ‘Social Survey

Movement,’ where the desire to document, count, tabulate and survey the nation

变—从社会统计到数理统计 (The Evolution of Statistics in Modern China—From Social Statistics to

Mathematical Statistics).” Shanghai jiaotong daxue xuebao (zhexue shehui kexue ban)上海交通大学学报

(哲学社会科学版), 18, no. 3 (2010): 61-67, 74.

60

Elman 2005: 333.

61

For more on the 1908 census, see Tong Lam 2012, Chapter III.

62

There has been much recent work on the rise of several modern (social) science disciplines, which

highlight the frequently transnational intellectual milieu within which they emerged, the critical importance

of European and American influence through training, institutions such as the Rockefeller foundation, and

collaboration between international and Chinese scholars, and so on. See for instance: Asen 2012

(Forensics); Buck 1980 (American Science); Chiang 2001 (Sociology), Hu Danian 2005 (Physics),

Mullaney 2011 (ethno-linguistic classification), Schmalzer 2008 (Evolutionary Science); Schneider 2003

(Biology and Genetics), and Trescott 2007 (Economics).

31

permeated not just the elite, trained practitioner of social science but also the lay man.63

For Tong Lam, these surveys operated on two levels. “The idea of social science and

social survey research presumed an external social reality with internal mechanisms

waiting to be discovered and dissected. On the other hand, Chinese social thinkers

themselves also vehemently argued that China did not have a real organic and

functioning society and that their goal was to create one.”64

By 1949, social scientists

such as the demographer and sociologist who headed the Institute of Census Research in

the 1940s, Chen Da 陈达 (1892-1975), the population geographer Hu Huanyong 胡焕庸

(1901-1998), the sociologist Chen Hansheng 陈翰笙 (1897-2004), and the economist Ma

Yinchu 马寅初 (1882-1982), all participated in a well-established, sophisticated, and

methodologically and ideologically diverse tradition of social science research and

statistical analysis.

In the field of statistics and statistical activity specifically, three broad trends are

discernible. The first is the expansion and diversification of educational materials relating

to statistics and a concomitant engagement with various approaches to statistical theory

and practice. In the years immediately following the establishment of the Republic in

1912, translated texts reflected an awareness and appreciation of the co-existing strands

of mathematical statistics (with its focus on probability theory), Anglo-American

statistics, as well as the more descriptive statistical practices prevalent in Germany.65

From the 1920s to the 1940s, numerous original works on statistical theory and

63

Lam notes that between 1927 and 1935 nine thousand surveys were carried out in China. Lam 2012: 4

64

Lam 2012: 9-10.

65

In a recent article, Br ard and Wang see the long-term trajectory from the late nineteenth into the first

half of the twentieth century to be one of a transition from social statistics to mathematical statistics 从社会

统计到数理统计. See: Br ard and Wang 2010.

32

application were also published.66

Other volumes offered comparisons of the differing

statistical traditions and their historical trajectories. For instance, in the 1935 publication

An Outline of Statistics 《统计学纲要》, Liu Hongwan 刘鸿万 observed that:

The view of the School of Social Statistics is that the objects of statistical

research are social phenomena, and the method of analysis is large-scale

observation [大量观察法]; the view of the School of Mathematical

Statistics is that it is a mathematical method that helps arrive at statistical

solutions [统计解析].67

In contrast, Wu Zaoxi 吴澡溪, in his Economic Statistics 《经济统计学》, contended

that statistics was not an independent social science. Instead, it was “a research method

that aided [辅助] the pursuit of other forms of knowledge [学问].”68

Indeed, through

much of the first two decades after 1911, statistics was not taught as an independent

subject. In 1927, with the establishment of the Central Politics School 中央政治学校, a

statistics division was set up within the Economics department. It was another ten years

before a dedicated department of statistics was established at National Chongqing

University 国立重庆大学.69

Even so, the general practice in most places remained for

66

Liu and Zhang list at least six texts on statistical theory and another 10 in applied statistics. See Liu and

Zhang 2000: 66.

67

Liu Hongwan 刘鸿万. Tongjixue gangyao 统计学纲要 (Outline of Statistics), 1935. Cited in Liu and

Zhang 2000: 67.

68

Wu Zaoxi 吴澡溪. Jingji tongjixue 经济统计学 (Economic Statistics), 1943; cited in Liu and Zhang

2000: 68.

69

Liu and Zhang 2000: 89-93. Several schools offering short term courses in statistical methods were

around since the mid-1920s. It is also worth noting that the establishment of statistics departments was a

late development globally.

33

statistical course offerings to be made through other departments, such as Economics,

Law, and Business.70

Concurrent with the gradual expansion and diversification of statistical education

was a gradual expansion in official statistical work. Within the first few years of the

Republic, offices and bureaus charged with carrying out statistical work were set up at

various levels, partly on the foundations of pre-existing local institutional mechanisms. In

1916 a State Council/Cabinet Office was re-established and contained a Bureau of

Statistics within it. The general picture up to 1927 is one of various government bureaus,

some dedicated to statistical work, but most involved in a variety of spheres, that

collected and disseminated data germane to their briefs.71

As described by D.K. Lieu, the years following 1927 witnessed renewed attempts

at centralization and expansion of statistical activity. But Lieu considered much of this

‘mushroom growth’ unsystematic, and in the final analysis, unhealthy, since it meant

duplication of work and a significant waste of limited resources. He was among the

people who convened a conference in February of 1930 that sought to address these

issues. The conference recommended that an independent Central Statistical Bureau be

established. Concurrently, it also recommended the establishment of a Central Statistical

Commission charged with coordinating the statistical activities of the different Ministries.

In the time it took to set these institutions up, the conference suggested forming a Central

Statistical Association which could immediately set about coordinating statistical

activities already underway. It also suggested carrying out population and agricultural

70

Statistics was introduced as a subject of study within several disciplines as early as 1913, and by 1920s

several universities offered courses in it.

71

For a detailed description, see: Lieu 1930: 7-12. Also see Liu and Zhang 2000: 79-85.

34

censuses in 1931. A final recommendation concerned the creation of a Chinese Statistical

Society, which would provide a private forum for academic discussions of statistics.72

Pursuant to these guidelines, the Directorate General of Budgets, Accounts and Statistics

was established on 1April 1931.

D.K. Lieu’s discussion is indicative of two broad features of statistical activity

during the latter half of the Republican period. The first is that state statistical activities,

though they ranged across such subjects as agriculture, population, industry and labor,

communications, finance, and so on, were fragmentary and essentially of a rather limited

scope, in terms of the types of data collected, their geographical reach, and their

representativeness. As the demographer Leo Orleans noted in a 1974 essay, “the

statistical system [of Republican China] never developed beyond the rudimentary stage

and almost never reached down to the hsien [county] levels.”73

The point is driven home

all the more forcefully by the number of non-state, in many cases non-Chinese, actors

whose data collection Lieu notes was an important source for the period. For instance, he

noted approvingly the statistical surveys conducted by the likes of Sydney Gamble, John

Lossing Buck, Chen Da, and others. In so doing, Lieu points us to the second broad

feature of the period—the lively and fairly diverse private engagement with statistics and

statistical work across China through the 1930s and 1940s.74

Indeed, outside of

government activity, there had also developed a lively community of scholars who

participated in research on social issues, generating copious amounts of statistical data as

a result. Such collaborative social research, frequently heavily statistical in nature, 72

Lieu 1930: 12.

73

Orleans 1974: 48.

74

Lieu 1930: 14-27.

35

involved Western social scientists, Chinese social scientists trained in the West, and

locally trained social scientists.75

International organizations such as the Council of

Pacific Relations, and the Rockefeller Foundation played a significant role as well,

frequently serving as principal funding or organizing agencies.76

By 1947, Jennings P. Chu 朱君毅 reported to the attendees at the International

Statistical Institute’s biannual conference that the Republic of China possessed a

Statistical Directorate that had proven to “be of immense value in government planning,

execution and investigation.”77

He identified five main characteristics of the system, to

wit: independence (from political interference), liaisonship (i.e. a combination of

centralized and decentralized administration), uniformity (across bureaus and types of

data), specialization (of personnel), and finally interdependence (between planning,

execution, and investigation). The duties of the Directorate included:

(1) Direction and supervision of statistical personnel and statistical functions

(2) Design and issuance of statistical forms and enforcement of uniform

procedures

(3) Assignment of statistical work across various departments

(4) Compiling National Census statistics

(5) Compiling a National Statistical Report

75

See, for instance: Daniel Kulp. Country Life in South China: The Sociology of Familism. Volume 1. New

York City: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1925; Fei Xiaotong. Peasant

Life in China: A Field Study of Country Life in Yangtze Valley. New York : E. P. Dutton, 1939; Fei

Xiaotong. Earthbound China: A Case Study of Rural Economy in Yunnan. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1945; Sydney Gamble. Ting Hsien: A North China Rural Community. New York: International

Secretariat Institute of Pacific Relations, 1954; Sydney Gamble. North China Villages: Social, Political,

and Economic Activities Before 1933. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963; Lin Yueh-hwa. The

Golden Wing: A Sociological Study of Chinese Familism. Greenwood Press, 1947; and John Lossing Buck.

Land Utilization in China, Atlas: A Study of 16,786 Farms in 168 Localities, and 38,256 Farm Families, in

Twenty-Two Provinces in China, 1929-1933. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937.

76

For more on the activities of the Rockefeller Foundation, see: Chiang 2000: Chapter 9.

77

Jennings P. Chu 朱君毅 (Zhu Junyi). “The Independently Controlled Statistical System of the Chinese

Government,” PISC, Vol. II, 1947, 93. In 1963 Zhu drafted a book on statistical work during the

Republican years. But it would not be published until 1988. See: Zhu Junyi 朱君毅 Minguo shiqi de

zhengzhi tongji gongzuo 民国时期的政治统计工作 (Government Statistical Work during the Republican

Period). Xiandai tongji zhishi congshu 现代统计知识丛书, 1988.

36

(6) Investigation of administrative efficiency and compiling statistics of

administrative results

The Directorate’s activities were summarized in a variety of publications, such as The

National Statistical Report and Abstract, The Statistical Analysis of National Problems

Series, The Statistical Monthly, and the first edition of the The China Statistical Yearbook,

released in 1947.78

All this is suggestive of a large statistical establishment in the postwar years, but

the actual numbers of bureaus and personnel that Zhu enumerated paint a different

picture. According to Zhu, at the end of June 1947, there were eight Bureaus of Statistics

and 660 Offices of Statistics in the principal and subordinate organs of the central

government. An additional thirty-two bureaus and 1,196 offices were located in the

provinces, municipalities, and counties. Total statistical units in the country numbered

1,905 and the total number of personnel amounted to 5,066, of which 120 were at the

Directorate of Statistics itself.79

In spite of such a seemingly small number of personnel

for such a large country, Zhu was optimistic about the future of statistical work in China.

The Japanese had been defeated, and the Communists also seemed to be on the run. A

stable future beckoned and Zhu looked forward to the establishment of a complete

statistical network, more trained personnel, and the “attainment of comprehensive,

accurate, and timely results.”80

78

Jennings P. Chu 1947: 92-95.

79

Jennings P. Chu 1947: 96.

80

Jennings P. Chu 1947: 96. He concluded: “The world is united now more than ever, and international

cooperation is aiming at world-wide stabilization and prosperity. All this leads to an extensive demand for

accurate and timely statistical information for internal as well as external use, and towards this goal the

Chinese Government is determined to keep abreast of the advanced countries of the world.”

37

Zhu’s optimism, we now know, was premature. By 1948, the tide of the civil war

that had raged since 1946 had begun to turn in the CCP’s favor. As such, Leo Orleans

perhaps summed-up it up best when he noted that “despite some well-meaning efforts by

the Nationalist government, when the Communists took over the mainland in 1949 China

continued to be ‘a land where the statistician may perish for want of a few figures, where

records are more romantic than mathematical.’”81

Wang Sihua 王思华 and the Northeast Statistics Bureau, 1949-1954

Well before the People’s Republic was officially brought into existence, the CCP had

begun to organize statistical work and economic activity in the regions it controlled. After

the end of the Second World War, the Party moved into the northeastern provinces

vacated by the Japanese. Wang Sihua 王思华 was assigned to these areas to aid in their

governance. Working under leaders such as Li Fuchun 李富春 and Gao Gang 高岗,

Wang’s first assignment was to take over the administration of West Liaoning and North

Liaoning. Early in 1947, he was also appointed the Deputy Secretary-General of

Heilongjiang province and the Director of both the Northeast Statistical Office and the

Standing Finance Committee.82

81

Orleans 1974: 48. Orleans himself quoted Bernard Martin. Strange Vigour. Port Washington, NY:

Kinnikat Press, 1970, 3.

82

Wang’s biographical details are drawn from the following sources: (1) Wang Sihua 1986: 224-226; (2)

“Jinian Wang Sihua tongzhi shishi wuzhou nian 纪念王思华同志逝世五周年 (Commemorating the Fifth

Anniversary of the Passing of Comrade Wang Sihua).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作 (China Statistics), no. 7

(1983): 5-6, 14; (3) Li Deng 李澄. “Ji nian Wang Sihua tongzhi 纪念王思华同志 (Commemorating

Comrade Wang Sihua).” Renwen zazhi 人文杂志 (The Journal of Humanities(Bimonthly)), no. 6 (1984):

64-65, 68; and (4) Trescott 2007: 241.

38

Wang Sihua was well suited to these tasks. He was born in 1904 in coastal

Laoting County 乐亭县 in the northern province of Hebei 河北 and as a student at

Beijing University in the 1920s, he enjoyed frequent contact with fellow Laoting County

native, the firebrand intellectual and founding father of the Chinese Communist Party, Li

Dazhao 李大钊. Under Li’s influence, Wang soon became involved in revolutionary

work. In 1926, he traveled to Europe and spent four years studying in France and

England. It was during those four years that he began translating Capital into Chinese.

Wang returned to China in the winter of 1930 and was appointed a professor of political

economy at Beiping University and at Sino-French University 中法大学.83

At the same

time, he also became part of an underground network of left-leaning professors. With the

support of the CCP, and the help of Hou Wailu 侯外庐, he continued to translate Capital.

In June 1936, the results of these labors were published as Capital-Volume 1 by the

International Society 国际学社; an accompanying commentary for the convenience of

readers was also published.84

A turn towards more active involvement in revolutionary work took place in 1934,

after Wang had been arrested and released on bail following charges of participating in

intelligence work. Starting that year, Wang not only collaborated with the Anti-

83

Beijing had been renamed Beiping (Northern Peace) in late June 1928 in the wake of the Guomindang’s

decision to relocate the national capital to Nanjing.

84

His biography notes that Wang published under his pseudonym Wang Shenming 王慎铭. The

companion volume was titled Zibenlun jieshuo 资本论解说. Hou Wailu 侯外庐 (1903 - 1987) was a

prominent historian and philosopher, and one of the major experts on Marxism in the PRC. After 1949 he

taught at Northwest University 西北大学. I was unable to track information about the 1936 publication.

The earliest extant (possibly abridged) editions appear to be from 1949 and 1950: Wang Sihua . Zibenlun

yanjiu congshu 资本论研究丛书. Harbin: New China Bookstore 新中国书局, 1949; and Wang Sihua.

Zibenlun jieshuo 资本论解说. Beijing: Sanlian Publishers 三联出版社, 1950.

39

Imperialist League 反帝大同盟 and the Anti-Japanese Society 抗日救国会, he was also

selected as a committee member of the Beiping Second War Zone Mobilization

Committee 北平第二战区动员委员会. After the fall of Beiping in early August 1937,

Wang made his way to Yan’an 延安, arriving there in September. He entered the Party

rolls the following year and was assigned to teach Political Economy at the Central Party

School 中央党校. During the rectification campaign that began in 1942, Wang, who by

then was directing research on China’s economy within the Central Research Institute 中

央研究院, conducted an agricultural survey in northern Shaanxi. The primary research

method for this survey was a form of typical sampling 典型调查. The following year, in

1943, Wang became the deputy director of the Northwest Financial Planning Council,

which was under the leadership of Chen Yun 陈云 (1905-1995).85

By the time that the Second World War drew to a close in Asia, Wang had

garnered significant experience in economic administration and was an ideal candidate to

be sent into the Northeast to contribute towards its administration. In October 1948, he

was appointed to the newly established Statistical Survey Unit of the Northeast Finance

and Economics Committee 东北财经委员会调查统计处. Among his early tasks was to

assess the economic conditions in the Northeast. Wang organized surveys of industrial

and commercial activity in Harbin, led investigations into the recent economic

85

Chen Yun 陈云 (1905-1995), regarded in China today as one of the ‘eight immortals’ 八大元老,

especially for his role in promoting economic reforms during the post-Mao era, was among the senior

leaders responsible for economic and financial affairs during the 1940s and 1950s. For more on

Chen’s role post-1978, see: Nicholas R. Lardy and Kenneth Lieberthal, eds. Chen Yün's Strategy for

China's Development: A Non-Maoist Alternative. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1983

40

development of the region, and compiled existing statistical data on the pre-liberation

economy.86

It was organizing statistical activity for the newly liberated Northeast (and China),

however, that was to become his principal mission. In April of 1950, the Northeast

Statistics Bureau (NSB) was officially set up in Shenyang 沈阳 and Wang was appointed

its director.87

Under Wang, the NSB laid the foundation of a comprehensive statistical

apparatus, began the systematic translation of Soviet statistics treatises, and disseminated

information about the Bureau’s work and the experience it gained through its monthly

journal Statistical Work 《统计工作》.88

Over the course of its four year existence, the

NSB would register many firsts in PRC history: the first region 大区 to set up a statistics

bureau, the first to publish a specialized statistics journal, the first to publish an Annual

Statistical Report 统计年报, and the first to pass a regional ordinance 地区条例

regarding statistical work.89

86

These activities were coordinated through an institute set up to research Japanese rule and the activities

of the Manchukuo Puppet Regime from 1932-1945 (伪满经济研究所). The institute’s work was aided by a

staff of thirteen Japanese, who helped edit historical materials and also helped calculate the fixed prices for

1943. They returned to Japan after these activities. See: “Huiwang: lishi shang de dongbei tongjiju 回望: 历

史上的东北统计局 (Looking Back: The History of the Northeast Statistics Bureau).” Tongji gongzuo 中国

统计 (Statistical Work), 2010.8: 22-23.

87

The offices were originally located near Zhongshan Square; later moving to Heping Distict, Northwest

Horse Street. Wang’s Deputy Director was Lin Lifu 林里夫 and the Bureau’s Secretary, Yang Jianbai 杨坚

白.

88

Not to be confused with the journal of the State Statistics Bureau, with which it shared a name, and for

which it was most likely the inspiration. The SSB’s Statistical Work was published starting in January 1953,

and most likely assimilated its predecessor.

89

In August 1954, along with the dissolution of the 6 regions 大区, the NSB was also dismantled and most

of its personnel were transferred to provincial stats bureaus; some 50 odd were also sent to Beijing. See:

“Huiwang: lishi shang…,” 2010: 22.

41

Under Wang’s leadership, the Northeast Statistics Bureau witnessed a more than

five-fold expansion in its rank and file. In his July 1950 address, Wang had reported that

altogether there were 5,860 cadre involved in statistical work (this estimate also included

part-time workers). Of these, the preponderance was occupied in tracking industrial

statistics (4778), with the remainder divided unevenly across trade, railways, and

agriculture.90

Two years later, in his December 1952 address, Wang noted that the NSB

now had 21,000 full-time statistical cadre who were aided by about 9,000 part-time

workers.91

He was also pleased that during the same time various statistical forms 统计报

告表格 had been unified and rationalized, their overall number having been brought

under control: over the nearly three year period, the bureau had managed to reduce the

number of forms from 3,318 to a much more manageable 396. This was the first step in

controlling duplication and the excess issuing of forms 滥发报表, he explained. 92

The monthly journal Statistical Work 《统计工作》, which began publication in

May of 1950, became the primary venue through which the bureau discussed a wide

variety of statistical issues. It continued publication till the end of 1952, and a total of

thirty-two issues were produced before the journal was absorbed into its national level

namesake, which began publication in January 1953.93

Periodically, important articles

90

Wang Sihua 1952: 8

91

Wang Sihua 1953: 1. The head office in Shenyang at this time had about 125 statistical workers.

92

Wang Sihua 1952: 8 and Wang Sihua 1953: 1. As early as July 1950, nearly 600 forms had already been

earmarked for deletion. Other strategies involved merging two or more kinds of forms, correcting forms,

and, on rare occasions, issuing new ones.

93

Six monthly issues constituted a volume 卷. In 1952, the system of volumes was discontinued and only

an issue number was used. Till Vol. 2 No. 2 it was an internal journal; after that it could be purchased by

anyone from bookstores. From Vol. 2 No. 5 onward, Xinhua Press 新华书店 began publishing it. See:

“Huiwang: lishi shang…,” 2010: 23.

42

were also compiled and published as anthologies 选辑.94

The subjects covered in these

anthologies can broadly be classified into four categories. The first category was

instructional and included essays on how to fill-in statistical tables and forms in industry,

agriculture, and other areas; how to assess and address problems with calculation, tables,

original records, and accounting; the nature of training; how to conduct analysis 分析;

and finally, how to provide explanatory textual material to accompany numerical data 文

字说明. A second category consisted of problems that the bureau was encountering and

wanted to address. Examples include excess issuing of forms 滥发报表; problems in

leadership; and dealing with conservatism in work. Thirdly, they included the publication

of important Statistical Laws and Regulations. A final fourth category dealt with the

various different kinds of statistical activities carried out by the bureau, and included

summaries of work and responsibilities; descriptions of surveys of industry (state and

private), crop production, as well as some early essays on typical sampling 典型调查.

The picture that emerges from such categorization is of a clear emphasis on establishing

procedure, unifying systems, and training people to do statistical work. There is

surprisingly little discussion of actual statistical results.

94

The library of the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences possesses the first,

third, fourth, and fifth volumes of the anthologies. Similarly, the Tsinghua University Library possesses the

fourth and sixth volumes. In all, I was able to access four, though at least six were produced:

《统计工作—第一选辑》, Northeast Statistical Press 东北统计局出版社, February 1951;

《统计工作—第二选辑》 ? 1951;

《统计工作—第三选辑》, Northeast Finance and Economics Press 东北财经出版社, January 1952;

《统计工作—第四选辑》, Northeast Finance and Economics Press 东北财经出版社, October 1952;

《统计工作—第五选辑》, Northeast Finance and Economics Press 东北财经出版社, January 1953；

《统计工作—第六选辑》? 1954.

Thus far, I have been unable to track individual issues of the NSB’s Tongji gongzuo 统计工作. They are

not part of the digitized China Academic Journals (CAJ) database and were not available in various

libraries across Beijing. It is possible that individual issues can still to be found in libraries or archives in

Harbin, Shenyang, or Changchun.

43

The Primacy of Exhaustive Enumeration

In terms of method, the system built under Wang consisted of two principal means of

statistical data collection. The first, and by far the more significant, was exhaustive

enumeration via the Complete Enumeration Periodical Report System 全面定期统计报

表制度.95

Its bedrock was the institutionalization and rationalization of original records

原始记录. The idea was that data would be collected primarily through a vast network of

comprehensive and periodic statistical reports that would span all sectors of the economy.

As Wang noted, each and every table had clear instructions for how to fill-in data and on

the timing and sequence of filing forms.96

Three important laws were passed in 1950 to

facilitate the process:97

1. The April 10 Law, Regarding the Strengthening of Statistical Work 《关于加

强统计工作的指示》, a notification 通知 of which was reissued on July 8th

.

This law established the NSB and called for the setting-up of a centralized

system of reports and required that statutory forms 法定表格 be used at and

by all levels. All other pre-existing forms were to be discarded 废除.

2. The Law of August 22, Regarding the Centralization of the Issuing of

Statistical Numbers 《关于统一公布统计数字的决定》. This law required

95

“Complete Enumeration Periodical Report System” is how the Chinese themselves had translated 全面定

期统计报表制度. See: WJB 105-00530-05: 11-12

96

“我们的每一种表格都明确的规定了填报方法、提报时间和提报程序.”

97

For the texts of these laws, see: Tongji gongzuo—diyi xuanji 统计工作—第一选辑, February 1951: 127-

132.

44

that all reported data be checked by the corresponding statistical office before

being sent to a higher level within the statistical organization.

3. The Law of October 13, Temporary Regulations for Statistical Reports in the

Northeast Region 《东北区统计报告暂行规程》. This was the first

Regional Ordinance 地区条例 for statistics in post-1949 China and clarified

the relationship between different levels of the statistical apparatus. Such a

system also enforced the use of a common set of forms and tables.

In other parts of the country, where statistics bureaus had yet to be set up, similar

directives were issued a few months later by the city or provincial governments through

the authority of the Statistics Office of the Central Planning Commission’s Finance and

Economics Committee 中央人民政府政务院财政经济委员会统计处. For instance, in

Beijing, a directive to establish and strengthen statistical work was issued on 15

December 1950. It designated the city’s Research Office to act as the coordinating and

distributing agency, to which all statistical tables must be sent.98

The following year, in March 1951, the NSB issued The Decision Regarding

Trials of a Two-Track Statistical Reporting System 《关于试行统计报告双轨制的决

定》, which set up a two-track system for reporting and collecting data. In the first track,

grassroots units reported data to the enterprise (business, company, or organization) with

which they were affiliated, and that enterprise then prepared a consolidated statement for

forwarding to the NSB. But these grassroots reporting units were also required to report

data using the statistical reporting system. Thus, in theory, data about the same unit

98

BMA 136-001-00014: 1-6; and BMA 002-002-00223: 1-6. Along with the directive, two sets of

instructions were also provided, explaining reporting methods 统计报告制度试行办法 and detailing

methods to review forms 表格审查办法.

45

arrived at the statistical offices in Shenyang via two parallel routes: one through the

enterprise, the other through the statistical system. The periodicity of these reports could

be as short as a ten-day cycle, or as long as an year, and included several possibilities in

between: monthly, seasonal, semi-annual, and so on. These reports would be sent up

through each successive level till they reached the headquarters of the NSB in Shenyang

(and later Beijing). Some of these seasonal and annual reports were also published, such

as the Northeast Report on Implementation of the National Economic Plan 东北区国民

经济计划执行情况的报告, which was published starting in 1951.99

The first Annual

Report 年报 was published on 1 April 1952 and provided data for all of 1951. By1954,

this system had expanded to include data from industry, capital construction, agriculture,

trade, transport and communication, private enterprise, as well as numerous other fields.

When data was required with an irregular level of expediency, one-time censuses

普查 were also employed. A national census of industry was completed by the end of

1950, and for the first time gave planners in Beijing an idea of the basic production

situation in each factory across China. On the factory-side it was hoped the census would

help understand production, discover latent potential 后备力量, correct management

shortcomings, and implement economic calculation. The census also raised awareness at

the factory level about the importance of statistical work, partly through the many

additional statistical cadre who had been trained during the census and were now familiar

with production processes and related technical issues. The NSB was at the forefront of

this survey, carrying it out from April through December of that year. A census of private

99

In the third season it was changed to 《人民经济计划执行情况的报告》and subsequently, in 1952, it

was changed to a six-monthly report. “Huiwang: lishi shang…,” 2010: 22-23.

46

industry was begun shortly thereafter, on 19 July 1950, via the Decision Regarding

Conducting a Census of Private Industry in the Northeast 关于进行全东北私营工业普

查的决定. This census covered six provinces and five cities, enumerated 39,539 private

industrial units and took eight months to complete.100

Unlike in industry, statistical work in agriculture did not easily permit exhaustive

enumeration, wither via a periodical report system or through one-time censuses.

Accordingly, the second method of data collection relied on sample surveying. The NSB

designed surveys to produce statistical estimates of agricultural production. These

surveys were invariably based on some form of typical sampling 典型调查, random

sampling 随机抽样调查 having been ruled out on account of its mathematical roots. In

designing them, the Chinese drew upon not just Soviet expertise but also their own

experiences from the 1930s. They discovered that Soviet experts, in general, were not

overly enthusiastic about the use of such surveys. 101

In the materials produced by the

NSB, the Soviet statistical experts’ discounting of surveying is perhaps best expressed by

the absence of the word for representative-ness 代表性.

The CCP’s experience conducting rural surveys during the 1930s was thus a

critical factor in determining the survey design of the early 1950s surveys. In his memoirs,

Xue Muqiao 薛暮桥, the economist and first director of the national State Statistics

Bureau, observed that the purpose of the 1930s surveys had been to estimate production

and organize the levying of taxes. Every province and city had established Production

Survey Committees or Production Survey Offices, which were led by the head of the

100

These were categorized as those using machines, or those with 3 or more workers.

101

For more on the place of random sampling and Soviet experts, see Chapters III and VIII.

47

local Planning Committee. These committees and offices used the method of meetings 会

议的方式 to disseminate what they were doing at the county level. Operating on the

maxim “divide by type, select [a] typical, really cut [grain] to really measure,” 8,000

surveyors investigated 1,175 typical 典型 villages.102

First, sown area was surveyed; then

areas were divided based on the nature of the harvest (good or bad); typical cases were

selected from within these divisions and surveyed after which overall estimates were

generated based on the relative weights of good and bad harvest areas.103

Such typical

sampling formed the basis of several other surveys carried out during this period. These

included surveys of rural surplus, livestock, and farms.104

Other Activities

Besides the collection and collation of data, other statistical activities included the

calculation of price indices, the periodic rectification of original records, and the cleaning

of statistical tables. In 1950, Soviet methods were used to compile a Price Index. A

common program for calculation was subsequently assigned to all provinces and cities so

that they could calculate local price indices. For instance, a survey of 2,000 products was

carried out in Shenyang in August of 1950 and the following month the NSB released the

Shenyang Wholesale Price Index 沈阳市私商批发物价指数. In October of that year, the

102

“划分类型，选择典型，实割实测.” See: Yang Jianbai 杨坚白 1953. “苏联专家帮助我们建立了科

学的统计工作,” Renmin ribao, February 05, pp. 3. As Xue would note, this was basically a rather simple

form of survey sampling. See: Xue 2006: 174.

103

Xue Muqiao 薛暮桥. Xue Muqiao—huiyilu 薛暮桥—回忆录 (Xue Muqiao—Memoirs). Tianjin: Tianjin

People’s Press, 2006, 174.

104

Various other surveys were conducted: In addition some other surveys, including: investigations of rural

surplus, production surveys, farm censuses, rural ancillary activities and livestock surveys, surveys of

private industry with more than ten workers, etc. See: “Huiwang: lishi shang…,” 2010: 22-23.

48

NSB released a State-Owned Whole Sale Price Index 国营批发物价指数. From

December onwards, indices were published monthly in the Northeast Daily 《东北日

报》. The following year, the NSB released a price index for the Northeast’s ten big

cities. After that, provincial and city-level indices began to be calculated in the Northeast

on a ten-day, monthly, or some other predetermined time-cycle.105

Rectification of original records 整顿原始记录, another practice that would

continue through the rest of the decade, was initially begun in the Northeast in 1951 in

statistical data for industry, capital construction, and trade. Over the following two years,

most industrial units went through two rounds of rectification and their data was widely

considered to be reliable. Local state-owned industrial units also went through at least

one round of rectification. In capital construction, rectification was modeled on that done

in the industrial cities of Angang 鞍钢 and Fushun 抚顺. These cities had begun

publishing a newspaper, Section Leader Daily 《组长日报》, which shared basic

information on the changing work conditions on a daily basis: work completion,

work/labor time, worker’s development, use of materials, and so on. By collecting all

such data into one report, these daily papers became the basis for unified, regular, and

accurate statistical data about these industries. This experience was subsequently shared

with the rest of the country and these methods used everywhere.106

The clean-up of statistical reports was also carried out twice. The first instance

was in 1950, per the orders of the Northeast People’s Government. The second instance

was in 1953, following a directive from the recently established State Statistics Bureau.

105

See: “Huiwang: lishi shang…,” 2010: 22-23.

106

See: “Huiwang: lishi shang…,” 2010: 23.

49

The clean-up involved getting rid of illegal reports as well as unnecessary reports and in

particular helped reduced the burden on grassroots units. It was also effective in raising

the standards of cadre, especially in the agricultural sector.

“A New Type of Standardized Statistical Work”

Taken together, these activities begin to provide a catalog of the basic contours of

statistical work in the Northeast. Wang’s “new type of standardized statistical work” (新

型正规化的统计工作 xinxing zhenggui de tongji gongzuo) had three basic features. The

first of these was ‘extensiveness’ 广泛化. For Wang this meant that socialist statistics,

unlike its bourgeois version, had mass character 大众化. In other words, it ran through

every sector of the economy and society:

Not only did it include all branches of the national economy, but also

culture, education, and health care; its content was extremely extensive,

and the procurement of materials, the collation of numbers, depended on a

comprehensive and unified reporting system.107

A unified reporting system also meant that each person and each element within the

system was absolutely critical. Even if one person’s work suffered from a fault 毛病, then

the entirety of statistical work was at fault.

Accordingly, a second characteristic was the system’s ‘completeness’ 整体性.

This completeness was a corollary to the extensiveness in that it sought to conceive of the

statistical work of every unit as an integral part of a unified statistical apparatus. The key

to achieving such completeness required standardization of forms and types of data so

107

Wang 1952: 13-14.

50

that comprehensive and comparable data were easily available. Equally important was the

creation of norms for entering data on forms and for their accompanying textual

explanations. 108

Since the integrity of such an extensive and complete system could

easily be threatened by a kink in any one level, it was imperative to create a unified

structure of reporting that permitted data (i.e. forms and tables) to be sent up and down

different levels of the statistical and administrative system.109

Such extensiveness and completeness were the basis for the third feature of

socialist statistics, namely its ‘objectivity’ 客观性. Unlike bourgeois statistics, which was

predicated on profit and meant that statistical data were frequently distorted 歪曲 to serve

the interests of the few and protect their business secrets, the New Statistics was unafraid

of exposing weakness. Quite to the contrary, it welcomed criticism and even took part in

self-criticism in the pursuit of objectivity and truth 真实性. 110

None of the above three ideals could be achieved without a disciplined cadre of

statistical workers who could calculate and analyze the data. Thus Wang noted that

discipline undergirded the entire edifice of statistical work. Discipline meant that

numbers were diligently recorded, that reporting deadlines were strictly observed, and

somewhat oddly, since Wang had just accused capitalists of the same failing, that all

statistical numbers were guarded like secrets.111

108

Wang 1952: 14.

109

Wang 1952: 14.

110

Wang 1952: 14.

111

Of course, unlike private secrets, these were the public’s secrets, i.e. the nation’s secrets, to be kept safe

from the prying of the bourgeois nations.

51

These features—extensiveness, completeness, objectivity—exemplified what was

deemed scientific by Wang because only by counting everything could an objective sense

of social reality be achieved.112

Such exhaustive counting in turn was the basis of the

socialist corrective to bourgeois statistics. Indeed, the implication was that a system that

was socialist was by definition also scientific, and therefore, correct. The three terms—

socialist, scientific, and correct—had become mutually interchangeable. Several years

later in 1957, the Indian statistician P.C. Mahalanobis would be impressed by these very

qualities of the by then national statistical system, noting that it was “appreciably better

than that in India in respect of coverage, availability, and accuracy of data required for

purposes of planning and current policy decisions.” 113

The system described by Wang,

and one that was first attempted in the Northeast was no doubt an idealization. On the

ground, a variety of challenges existed: some on account of local variation across China,

some as problems of calculation, and others because of incentives and disincentives that

were systemic in nature. Many of these will be explored in later chapters. For now, let us

turn to an alternate method of ascertaining social fact, which drew its authority directly

from Mao Zedong himself.

112

For a brief but insightful discussion on the ‘reality’ of statistics, especially through an analysis of its

practitioners, see: Alain Desrosières. “How Real Are Statistics? Four Possible Attitudes.” Social Research

68, no. 2, (Summer 2001): 339-355.

113

P.C. Mahalanobis. Some Impressions of a Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957, p. 12-13. Unpublished

typed manuscript in the P.C. Mahalanobis Memorial Museum and Archives (PCMMA), Kolkata.

52

Maoist Social Investigation as Method

Mao is known to have personally conducted at least two investigations into social

conditions in the countryside, the first in 1927 and the second in 1930.114

The reports of

these investigations, along with other writings such as his essay “Oppose Book Worship”

(1930) and “On Practice” (1937)115

, served to articulate a form of social investigation 社

会调查 that was at once at odds with not only the bourgeois ‘social survey movement’ of

the 1930s but also with established Marxist methods of social science research, in China

and elsewhere.116

For Mao, the only way of understanding a situation was to carry out

several “thorough investigations” 周密的调查 of selected cities and villages and use

Marxism-Leninist class analysis. “Only in this way,” he contended, was it possible “to

gain the most fundamental understanding of China’s social problems.”117

Mao’s principal method was to carry out ‘investigation meetings’ 调查会. This

meant gathering a small select group of informants from whom he would gather not just

knowledge about the situation on the ground, but also information about local group-

dynamics, solidarities, and inter-personal tension, all with a view to deploying such

114

In 1927 he spent 32 days, from January 4 to February 5, in five counties in Hunan. His report was

published as the famous Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan. A few years later,

in May of 1930, he conducted a survey in the town of Xunwu, which lay in southern China where the

provinces of Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangdong met. See: Mao Tse-Tung. Report on an Investigation of the

Peasant Movement in Hunan. Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1965 (3rd

edition; first edition 1953).

Translated from the Chinese original 湖南农民运动考察报告 in: Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung,

Volume I. Peking: People’s Publishing House, 1952), pp. prefatory material, 1. On the Xunwu

investigation, see: Roger Thompson, tr. Report from Xunwu. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.

115

On the controversy over when exactly this essay and the essay on contradiction were actually composed,

see: Nick Knight. “Mao ZeDong's on Contradiction and on Practice: Pre-Liberation Texts.” The China

Quarterly, no. 84 (Dec., 1980): 641-668.

116

On the former, see Lam 2012; and on the latter, see: Chiang 2001.

117

Mao Zedong 毛泽东 1941.《农村调查的序言和跋》. See: Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Volume

III. Beijing: People’s Press, 1966, 747.

53

information to achieve specific political ends. This method valorized the personal

experience of conducting such interviews. It discounted methodological issues such as

representativeness and comprehensiveness in favor of the ability to effectively create

change and bring about consensus.118

The method’s importance and its impact before and

after 1949 have been the subject of earlier work, most notably that of Thomas Mullaney,

Yung-chen Chiang, and Roger Thompson.119

While Chiang and Mullaney disagree on the

degree to which Mao was self-reflexive about the methodological strengths or

weaknesses of his method, both insist that the method retained its primacy in the years

after 1949.120

While that may indeed have been true in some spheres, in the realm of

statistics this method of social investigation was very much a source of tension for its

practitioners and theoreticians.

Two things within Mao’s method were particularly at odds with the socialist

statistics espoused by Wang Sihua. The first was that Mao placed tremendous value on

individual experience—drawing authority from one’s presence in the field, personally

118

For Mao, the stakes were admittedly different: an interest in equity, self-reliance, decentralization,

anatagonism to bureaucratism and elitism, collective aims and discipline, and the continuing desire for

mass struggle. For a discussion of these themes, see: Mao Zedong. A Critique of Soviet Economics by Mao

Tsetung (translated by Moss Roberts; annotated by Richard Levy, with an introduction by James Peck).

London: Monthly Review Press, 1977, 13, 14, and 17-18. Also see Xue Muqiao 1957: 13, where the

method is listed as one among a set of supplementary methods used by statisticians.

119

For detailed treatments of Mao’s social-ethnographic method that explore some of these themes, see:

Chiang 2001:150-58; Mullaney 2010: 97-101; and Thompson, tr., 1990.

120

As Chiang notes: “The power and prestige of Mao were such that his vision and approach dictated the

way social investigations were conducted in the People’s Republic until the 1970s” adding, “his group fact-

finding sessions became the ubiquitous format according to which all social investigations have been

conducted in China.” To which Mullaney is in general agreement: “Following 1949, this mode of field

research—one in which the boundary between information and transformation was porous by design—

continued to be employed.” See: Chiang 2001: 156, 157, Mullaney 2010: 99.

54

carrying out a survey. 121

Personal subjectivity was the basis for the pursuit of objective

reality. The theoretical basis of this position was best articulated in his essay “On

Practice.” In it, he noted that “the peoples with real personal knowledge are those

engaged in practice the wide world over.”122

If you want to know a certain thing or a certain class of things directly,

you must personally participate in the practical struggle to change reality,

to change that thing or class of things…Only through personal

participation in the practical struggle to change reality can you uncover the

essence of that thing or class of things and comprehend them…All

genuine knowledge originates in direct experience… [and] there can be no

knowledge apart from practice.123

Mao exemplified this position in practice in his Hunan report. From the reports very first

sentence, he placed himself squarely in the middle of the investigation:

“During my recent visit to Hunan I made a first-hand investigation of

conditions in the five counties…I called together fact-finding conferences

in villages and county towns, which were attended by experienced

peasants and by comrades working in the peasant movement, and I

listened attentively to their reports and collected a great deal of

material.”124

[Emphasis added]

He was present ‘first-hand,’ ‘fact-finding,’ and ‘listened attentively.’ The local

informants he preferred to meet were those who had a good understanding of local

121

For a discussion of how during the Republican years personal experience (and hardship) during the

conduct of a social survey was a key source of one’s authority, see: Tong Lam 2012. Also, Mullaney 2011:

96-97.

122

“Leaving aside their genius, the reason why Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin could work out their

theories was mainly that they personally took part in the practice of the class struggle and the scientific

experimentation of their time; lacking this condition, no genius could have succeeded…” Mao Tse-Tung.

“On Practice.” In Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung. Volume I. Peking: People’s Publishing House, 1952.

Accessed from: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm

123

Mao Zedong 1952 (“On Practice”). This ideological position would also lead to the famous dictum: “no

investigation, no right to speak.”

124

Mao 1965: 1.

55

conditions.125

But he would add that picking up information less systematically was just

as important: “I met all sorts of people and picked up a good deal of gossip.”126

Later in

the report he would note, for instance: “When I was in the countryside, I heard the gentry

say…”127

Mao’s authority to speak also drew from his subjective position of being

personally present in the field, which allowed him not only to interview informants but to

also witness events as they unfolded: “I myself saw two [evil gentry] captured in

Changsha…128

Personal testimony was augmented by direct quotes from the people he

met and interviewed, thereby adding the kind of local flavor that statistical data collected

through a periodical report system could never hope to attain: “Whenever their

conversation turns to the heads of the tu and tuan, the peasants say angrily, ‘That bunch!

They are finished!’”129

It was such experience that Mao would extoll but also claim was

imperative because it allowed you to gather information and make assessments based on

that.130

And the process was not without excitement of impending revolutionary change:

125

For somewhat contrasting discussions of Mao’s group-interview process and the selection of interview

candidates, see Mullaney 2010: 97; Chiang 2001: 155-156.

126

Mao 1965: 7; also see another instance on p. 6.

127

Mao 1965: 13.

128

Mao 1965: 29.

129

Mao 1965: 35; also see: Mao 1965: 16-17, 34, 41 for other examples. In most cases these were

representative quotes, and not the specific sayings of any one person that he was reporting.

130

On Mao’s understanding of cognition and knowledge, it is useful again to consult “On Practice,” where

he notes: “…the dependence of rational knowledge upon perceptual knowledge. Anyone who thinks that

rational knowledge need not be derived from perceptual knowledge is an idealist. In the history of

philosophy there is the “rationalist” school that admits the reality only of reason and not of experience,

believing that reason alone is reliable while perceptual experience is not; this school errs by turning things

upside down. The rational is reliable precisely because it has its source in sense perceptions, otherwise it

would be like water without a source, a tree without roots, subjective, self-engendered and unreliable. As to

the sequence in the process of cognition, perceptual experience comes first…” See: Mao Zedong. 1952

(“On Practice”).

56

“If you revolutionary viewpoint is firmly established and if you have been to the villages

and looked around, you will undoubtedly feel thrilled as never before.131

Mao’s enthusiasm for such investigative strategies was accompanied by a lack of

precision where actual numbers were concerned. Throughout the Hunan report he

frequently dealt in whole numbers or expressed ranges that could, at best, only be taken

as having token representative value. Thus, in discussing the number of spears among

spear corps in the five counties he would offer numbers such as 100,000 in one county

( Hsianghsiang), or ranges such as “70,000-80,000 or 50,000-60,000 or 30,000-40,000”

in the remaining counties.132

The number of rifles amongst the landlord class was

discussed with somewhat greater precision, but still with a propensity for neat, whole

numbers: “An average of 600 rifles for each country would make a total of 45,000 rifles

for all the seventy-five counties [in central Hunan]…”133

Elsewhere, in similar fashion,

he noted that “a crowd of fifteen thousand peasants,” demonstrated at the houses of six

evil gentry.134

Finally, it remains unclear how he arrived at the results of his surveys of

Changsha county (where he claimed that poor peasants comprised 70%, middle peasants

20%, and landlord and rich peasants the remaining 10%) and Hengshan (85% of peasant

leaders are capable and hard-working, while 15% retain some bad habits).135

131

Mao 1965: 8.

132

Mao 1965: 37.

133

Mao 1965: 36.

134

Mao 1965: 27.

135

Mao 1965: 18-19, 21. On the impossibility of finding out what kind of data Mao actually collected

during his investigations because the field data and notebooks are all likely lost, see Chiang 2001: 151.

57

The second feature of Maoist social research at odds with socialist statistics was

the invocation of a telling example as a representation of a larger social reality.136

As

Mao would state in the Hunan report, “quite a few such cases have occurred. There was a

case recently at Machiahao, Hsiangtan County, where…,” or “once in Hsiangtan when a

district peasant association and a township peasant association could not see eye to

eye.”137

In similar fashion, when discussing the effect that the execution of one landlord

can have, he cited the example of his native county of Hsiangtan. Socialist statistics was

intrinsically uncomfortable with such a strategy of using the part as a representative of

the whole. The use of an example was acceptable for illustration, but could not be the

basis of one’s knowledge about the totality of social reality.

If Mao’s ethnographic method was a way of ascertaining social fact, so indeed

was socialist statistics.138

For PRC-era socialist statisticians, Mao’s method was

essentially a form of typical sampling. In his July 1951 speech, Li Fuchun had spoken of

methods of data collection that were supplementary to the periodical report system,

pointing specifically to Mao’s method of typical investigations using investigation

meetings 调查会, noting that they had been in use for well over a decade.139

But within

socialist statistics such typical sampling was considered a secondary method, only to be

136

The rhetoric of example as discussed by Alain Desrosieres has a long history and remains a powerful

form of social analysis to this day. Till the rise of randomized survey sampling, it provided the basic ideas

behind systematized forms of purposive or typical sampling. For more on the rhetoric of example and the

history of random sampling, see Part III below. Also see: Alain Desrosières 2002: 210-235 (“The Part for

the Whole: Monographs or Representative Sampling”).

137

Mao 1965: 27.

138

Yang Jianbai 杨坚白. “Sulian zhuanjia bangzhu women jianli le kexue de tongji gongzuo 苏联专家帮

助我们建立了科学的统计工作 (Soviet Experts have Helped us Establish Scientific Statiatical Work).”

Renmin ribao (People’s Daily), February 05, 1953: 3.

139

See: DSJ: 5.

58

used when periodical reports and exhaustive enumeration were impossible. Wang’s “new

type of standardized statistical work” described above was predicated on abstraction and

the ability to collate vast amounts of data. An individual statistician or statistical cadre

drew his authority and knowledge neither from his personal experience of the field nor

from having participated in data collection at the village and county level, but primarily

from the power of abstraction. It was not the observation of habit 习惯, the application of

common sense 常识, or any other individual personal experience that was critical, but

rather specialized training that allowed him to correctly record data, process it, and

analyze it. The knowledge and practice that Mao spoke of were not the knowledge and

practice that socialist statistics would have its statisticians specialize in.140

To further

complicate matters, Mao’s method was also hardly the kind of representative typical

sampling that had actually been conducted in the Northeast under Wang.

Socialist statistics remained in uncomfortable tension with the Maoist method for

much of the decade of the 1950s. In fields that had putatively ceased to exist, such as

sociology, the methodological vacuum was filled by the Maoist method. But in the case

of statistics, the method went against Soviet experience as well as the very framing of

socialist statistics. Given the latter’s dominance during the 1950s, the Maoist method

served to make it harder to convince cadre, in particular grass roots cadre, of the efficacy

and need for something as expansive and alienating as the periodical report system and

exhaustive enumeration. It was only after 1958, when socialist statistics itself was

abandoned during the Great Leap Forward that the Maoist method would come to occupy

center-stage as the principal statistical method of social investigation.

140

“There can be no knowledge apart from practice.” See: “On Practice.”

59

Conclusion

For Wang Sihua, three features taken together exemplified the strengths and scientific

character of the Northeast’s statistical system: extensiveness across economy and society,

completeness of the statistical system, and objectivity about social fact. By placing the

periodical report at the core of this system, he articulated a preference for exhaustive

enumeration. Only in this way, by counting everything, did he and other Chinese

statisticians claim to achieve an objective sense of social reality. In contradistinction to

their system of high abstraction lay the personal, anecdotal, and ethnographic model of

Mao’s early social analyses. For much of the decade of the 1950s, the abstraction of the

periodical report was the normative ideal in the world of PRC statistics. That is not to say

that its alienating tendencies did not generate tensions (as will be discussed below in Part

II), but this tension was largely kept in abeyance. It was only with the launching of the

Great Leap Forward in the summer of 1958 that Mao’s method would be rebadged and

elevated above other methods of statistical data gathering. We shall return to that in Part

III.

60

CHAPTER III

Lies, Damned Lies, and (Bourgeois) Statistics:

Ascertaining Social Fact

61

Where did the inspiration for and confidence in exhaustive enumeration via a periodical

report system come from? In the most concrete terms it came from the desire to emulate

the success of the Soviet Union. To the Chinese (and many other socialist states after

1945), the Soviet Union “provided the only historical model for industrializing an

economically backward country under socialist political auspices.”141

The Chinese

Communist Party’s (CCP) attitude toward such ‘advanced experience’ 先進經驗 had

been articulated by none other than Mao Zedong 毛泽东 himself. In 1949, he had stated:

“The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is our best teacher and we must learn from

it.”142

The Soviet Union had responded with enthusiasm. A principal element of Soviet

aid was sharing technical knowledge. By 1960, when the Sino-Soviet split became final,

as many as 18,000 Soviet and Eastern European Experts had spent time in China sharing

their expertise.143

A handful among them were statistical experts—consultants,

administrators, and teachers—whose advice was instrumental in the organization of the

Northeast Statistics Bureau and later, the State Statistics Bureau. 141

Maurice Meisner. Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic. 3rd

Edition. New York:

The Free Press, 1999, 109. Mao had articulated much the same point in his essay “On Practice,” where he

noted: “The struggle of the proletariat and the revolutionary people to change the world comprises the

fulfillment of the following tasks: to change the objective world and, at the same time, their own subjective

world—to change their cognitive ability and change the relations between the subjective and the objective

world. Such a change has already come about in one part of the globe, in the Soviet Union. There the

people are pushing forward this process of change. The people of China and the rest of the world either are

going through, or will go through, such a process.” See: Mao Tse-Tung. “On Practice.” In Selected Works

of Mao Tse-Tung. Volume I. Peking: People’s Publishing House, 1952.

Accessed from: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm

142

Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung). “The People's Democratic Dictatorship.” Speech delivered “In

Commemoration of the 28th Anniversary of the Communist Party of China, June 30, 1949,” in Selected

Works, Vol. 5. New York: International Publishers, n.d., 411-423. This was also the speech in which Mao

used the phrase “leaning to one side” to describe China’s policy. On the speech and this policy, see: Odd

Arne Westad, ed. Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945-1963. Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 1998, 247-250. For other similar statements extolling the virtues of the Soviet

Union, also see Thomas P. Bernstein and Hua-yu Li, eds. China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-

Present. New York: Lexington Books, 2010, 1.

143

Shen Zhihua. Sulian zhuanjia zai zhongguo (1948-1960) 苏联专家在中国 1948-1960 (Soviet Experts in

China). Beijing: Xinhua Press, 2003.

62

The confidence in exhaustive enumeration was not, however, a mere artifact of

emulation (or practicality); rather, embedded in this choice, was a deep-seated and

sophisticated theoretical criticism of statistics as it had evolved and was evolving at that

time. Put differently, the confidence in exhaustive enumeration came from a particular

understanding of how to count and ascertain social reality, and the place of mathematics

in that process. Within this theoretical framework, exhaustive enumeration came to serve

as the basis for the socialist corrective to what came to then be labeled “bourgeois”

statistics. What socialist statistics and its preference for exhaustive enumeration did was

to deny the universal applicability of mathematics in general and mathematical statistics

in particular.

The purpose of this chapter, then, is two-fold: first, to uncover and understand the

socialist critique of statistics; and second, to investigate the Soviet statistical experts who

spent time in China and who were instrumental in socialist statistics’ rise to a position of

epistemological and administrative dominance. The chapter proceeds with a discussion of

the 1950s (or post-1945, more accurately) as a period where the imperative to ascertain

social fact took on added urgency across the world. There existed, however, competing

approaches to ascertaining social fact and the following sections dwell on the rise of

socialist statistics, in particular its rise in the USSR, and contrast it with other approaches

to statistics. I then turn toward an exploration of the Soviet experts who spent extended

periods of time in the PRC, examining the variety of ways—teaching, translation of

textbooks, and consultation—through which their expertise was mobilized by the Chinese

State Statistics Bureau as it sought to disseminate the correct understanding and

implementation of socialist statistics.

63

Ascertaining Social Fact in the 1950s—A Global Imperative

Over the last two to three decades the history of quantification, probability, counting, and

facticity in the early modern and pre-twentieth century world has garnered increasing

amounts of attention. The rich studies that have emerged have helped establish

quantification and statistics as independent subjects of inquiry, situating them at the very

heart of the modern and post-modern experience.144

Among the many insights that have

been offered by this rich literature is the significant role played by the state and by the

study of the social world (in addition to the natural world), particularly through the

expansion of bureaucracies and administrative duties, in the realization of what Ted

Porter has called the ‘statistical perspective.’145

If these were essentially nineteenth century developments, largely limited within

the boundaries of nation states, or in certain cases, imperial formations, the twentieth

century presented challenges of a rather new nature. The experiences of World War I led

to the desire for new international/global institutions of arbitration and peace. The most

well-known example of this is, of course, the founding of the League of Nations. One of

the activities the League was involved in was the design and organization of

commensurable economic and financial data.146

At the same time, the duties of the state

144

See, for instance, Porter 1986, 1995; Hacking 1990; Poovey 1998; Kruger, et al 1987; Patriarca 1996;

and Desrosiers 1998.

145

“…what we might call the statistical perspective owed more to the work of census bureaus and

statistical offices concerned with health, crime, trade, and education than to the pure theory of

mathematical probability.” Theodore M. Porter. “Chance Subdued by Science.” Poetics Today 15, no. 3

(Fall 1994): 474. Elsewhere, Michael Gordin has spoken of “the importance of statistics as a lens for

examining the rise of Soviet governance,” a claim that would apply more generally to the rise of

governance as well. Michael D. Gordin. “Statitique et revolution en Russie: Un compromisie impossible

(1880-1930), and: L’anarchie bureaucratique: Statistique et pouvoir sous Staline.” Kritika: Explorations in

Russian and Eurasian History 5, no. 4 (Fall 2004) (New Series): 803-810.

146

As early as August 1919 the League convened meetings to discuss international cooperation in statistics.

It mooted the establishment of an International Statistical Commission, which met for the first time in Paris

64

also expanded far beyond their nineteenth century norms. Fueled in part by the rise of

Communism and by the experience of the Great Depression, which, in turn, facilitated the

rise of Keynesian economics, the state began to take on ever expanding responsibility in

regulating the economy and providing services to its citizens.147

From a technological

standpoint, each of the World Wars also played their role, as they provided opportunities

for the design, experimentation and deployment of advanced techniques of data collection

and analysis. Operations Research, for instance, was a field that grew substantially on the

basis of war time exigencies.148

After World War II, the earlier efforts of the League of

Nations were renewed through the United Nations, which established various institutions

for global order and communication, including a Statistical Commission in 1947.

Finally, the collapse of empires that gathered pace in the wake of WWII heralded

the arrival of several new nation states, each with its own modernizing mission. A

principal way to be modern, and demonstrate one’s modernity to others, was to know

oneself and at the same time exhibit this self-knowledge to others. A statistical system

that gathered and disseminated such knowledge using numbers, and which employed the

latest methods, became the hallmark of a modern nation state.149

For a long time, a

in October of the following year. For more, see: J. W. Nixon. A History of the International Statistical

Institute 1885-1960. The Hague: International Statistical Institute, 1960, 28-29, 42.

147

For more on this, see for instance, Desrosieres 1998. Mention can be made here of the rise of National

Income Accounting, unemployment statistics, macroeconomic theory with its focus on employment,

economic planning, and so on.

148

On the wartime histories of operations research in the United Kingdom and the United States, see:

Maurice W. Kirby. Operations Research in War and Peace: The British Experience from the 1930s to 1970.

London: Imperial College Press, 2003; Randall Thomas Wakelam. The Science of Bombing: Operational

Research in RAF Bomber Command. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009; and Charles S. Schrader.

History of Operations Research in the United States Army, Vol. 1 1942-1962. Washington, D.C.: US Army,

2006.. 149

In his discussion of planning in post-colonial India, for instance, Partha Chatterjee has shown how the

act of planning for a new nation was formulated through the logic of numbers. Statistical indicators were

65

standard imperial argument had been that locals did not even possess an accurate and

scientific means of ascertaining (social) fact. Empire’s civilizing mission, thus, included

this ‘gift’ of fact and numerical representation. In the Chinese case, the discourse about

the lack of facts was keenly felt. Almost on par with the nineteenth century Western

imperial assertion that China lacked a rational legal system, the lack of factual self-

knowledge came to inform a discourse of national humiliation. As Tong Lam has shown

in a recent study, the response was the rise of a “social survey movement,” whose

principal goal was to assess what China was—to make her legible, knowable, and thereby,

eventually changeable.150

By the end of World War II, these developments, and the desire for a new world

[order], contributed in part to what might be termed a more globalized epoch of statistics

driven numerical positivism.151

For, each of these developments depended upon and

demanded new levels of data collection and analysis. This desire for data, for facts, was

summed up by the UN Secretary General Trygvie Lie in 1947. Addressing the inaugural

session of the International Statistical Institute’s twenthieth meeting in Washington, D.C.,

Lie observed:

“The free exchange of information on economic and social affairs among

all countries in the world is absolutely necessary to economic and social

advancement. We cannot cure our troubles unless we know in the first

place what those troubles are. Likewise we cannot achieve international precisely the metrics through which progress could be measured and contrasted with colonial under-

development. See: Partha Chatterjee. “Development Planning and the Indian State.” In The State

Development Planning and Liberalisation in India, edited by T J Byres, 82-103. New Delhi: Oxford

University Press, Delhi, 1998.

150

Lam 2012.

151

On how some of these tendencies played out in the articulation of a particular ‘Cold-War rationality’ in

the United States, see: Paul Erickson, Judy L. Klein, Lorraine Daston, Rebecca Lemov, Thomas Sturm, and

Michael Gordin [Hereafter Erickson, et al]. How Reason Almost Lost its Mind—The Strange Career of

Cold War Rationality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

66

understanding, which is the basis of advancement, unless the peoples of

the world are given the facts about each other…There is no substitute for

facts, for clear and systematically organized facts. They alone can be

relied upon to measure resources and potentialities for progress and to

direct policies and actions designed to achieve the objectives of all

civilized people.”152

[emphasis added]

Speaking, as he was, at the pre-eminent gathering of international statisticians, the desire

for ‘clear and systematically organized facts’ was predicated on a form of numerical

positivism—numbers alone could help understand ground realities, design solutions to

problems, and plan for the future. The postwar years were, as a result, a time when

several statistical innovations achieved tremendous legitimacy, the attendant positivism

informing actions in all spheres of human activity.153

Among these innovations can be

listed large scale sample surveying (something which we shall return to in Part III),

operations research, development theory (most notably W.W. Rostow’s theory about the

Stages of Economic Growth), demographic transition theory, random sampling methods

such as Monte Carlo, and the spread of economic planning.

152

Trygve Lie. Opening Address to the International Statistical Institute’s 1947 Meeting. Introduction—

International Statistical Conferences, September 6-18, 1947, Washington, D.C. Proceedings of the

International Statistical Conference, Volume I. Calcutta: Alka Press, 1951, 151 At the same meeting,

discussions were also held to set up an International Association for Research in Income and Wealth. It was

felt that “the solution to many important problems in the field could be sought most effectively by the close

cooperation of those most familiar with the income and wealth statistics in the various countries…[and that]

such an organization would serve to bring the scholars in the field together; to develop greater familiarity

on the part of members with work in other countries; and to provide a continuous stimulus to the solution of

ever present problems of definition and analysis and to the formulation of new approaches.” See Volume I:

308-311.

153

In 1986, Ted Porter had observed that statistical tools used in modern sciences had been worked out

over the previous 100 years or so. The phase of invention was mostly in the nineteenth century and the

phase of development during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Extending his periodization,

we can label the rest of the twentieth century starting with WWII as the period of application and

refinement. See: Porter 1986: 3.

67

A Universal Science

Most of these innovations were made possible because of a specific shift in the

understanding of statistics, quantification, and probability that occurred during the

nineteenth century. Until the late nineteenth century, statistical activities broadly

construed progressed along two non-intersecting tracks, one descriptive and the other

analytic. The descriptive traced its origins to the seventeenth century “political arithmetic”

of William Petty among others, the German school of descriptive statistics (Statistik,

from which the modern word originates), and through them to a much more fundamental

and age-old global phenomenon—the desire of the state to collect information about its

constituents, its land, its produce, and so on. The analytic, which can be traced at least as

far back as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was principally concerned with

concepts of chance, probability, and estimating and controlling error, primarily in an

abstract, mathematical sense.154

The shift that occurred in the 19th

century involved a new

understanding of error not as a reflection of chaos but rather as variations in a given

natural order. As Ted Porter notes, "the acceptance of indeterminism constitutes one of

the most striking changes of modern scientific thought. With few exceptions, scientists

and philosophers previous to the late nineteenth century would have agreed with

Augustus De Morgan that to say an event occurs by chance is to say that it occurs for no

154

This is no doubt a gross simplification of an era where ideas about probability were in tremendous flux.

As Lorraine Daston has shown, a key feature of this period was that probabilists did not differentiate

between objective and subjective aspects of probability, the former a feature of the world and the latter

based on a degree of judgment or certainty. For more, see Daston 1988. Also see: Poovey 1998.

68

reason at all.”155

Similarly, Ian Hacking has shown how the erosion of determinism made

possible “autonomous laws of chance.”

The idea of human nature was displaced by a model of normal people with

laws of dispersion. These two transformations were parallel and fed into

each other. Chance made the world seem less capricious: it was

legitimated because it brought order out of chaos. The greater the level of

indeterminism in our conception of the world and of people, the higher the

expected level of control.156

For Hacking and Porter, these developments owed as much to the study of natural

phenomena as they did to social phenomena.157

It was not error analysis per se, but rather

the use of probability as a modeling tool to analyze variation in nature and society, a

mutual cross-pollination across disciplines and intellectual pursuits, which contributed to

the evolution of statistics as a distinctly mathematical field of inquiry.

This, in brief, is the liberal story in which statistics emerges as a universal science,

capable of studying and discerning patterns in both society and nature. But statistics also

has an alternate history, which, at least for a significant portion of the 20th

century,

enjoyed great legitimacy and widespread use.

155

Porter 1986: 149-150. Porter continues: “Still, this story is not simply one of a new appreciation of the

empire of chance. Randomness first attained real standing in scientific thought not as a source of massive

uncertainty, but as a small-scale component of an over-arching order. The recognition of chance stemmed

not from the weakness of science, but from its strength--or rather, its aggressive imperialism, the drive to

extend scientific determinism into a domain that had previously been seen by most as the realm of

inscrutable whimsy."

156

Hacking 1990: vii.

157

As Porter notes in Part II of his book: “Quetelet's insight concerning distribution of traits in human

populations confirms the more general argument of this book: role of social science in the development of

statistical thinking.” See: Porter 1986. In a related way, Michel Foucault too analyzed this shift, though he

located it to more to the bourgeois drive for self-identification and the molding of society.

69

A Critique of Universality

Lenin is famously said to have observed that “socialism is first of all accounting.”158

Within the former USSR he enjoyed fame as a skilled statistician who used numbers to

expose the oppression and injustices of imperialist Tsarist rule and, after 1918, as

someone who vigorously promoted the development of state statistical institutions.159

Stalin, too, is known to have remarked on the fundamental importance of statistical

activities and data.160

In accepting the centrality of statistics as a tool for understanding

and shaping economic phenomena, Marxist and Soviet thinkers and practitioners shared

much in common with thinkers in other parts of the world. 161

But in the selection of

theory and methods to pursue these goals, they drew a sharp line between themselves and

thinkers in a liberal tradition. While Marx was likely cognizant and appreciative of

developments in mathematics and statistics made possible by the works of such notable

figures as Quetelet, Poisson, and Laplace, Soviet and Chinese statisticians were quick to

point out that he restricted his own discussions on the efficacy of statistics solely to the

realm of political economy.162

158

V. Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. XXII. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1960 (Reprinted 1977-1978), 50.

159

On Lenin as a statistician see: S. a. E. S. Kotz. “Lenin as Statistician: A Non-Soviet View.” Journal of

the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (Statistics in Society) 153, no. 1 (1990): 73-94.

160

“Comrades, no constructive work, no state activity, no planning is conceivable without proper

accounting. And accounting is inconceivable without statistics. Without statistics, accounting cannot

advance one inch.” Joseph Stalin. “Organisational Report of the Central Committee.” May 24 1924.

Accessed: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/05/24.htm

161

“In the U.S.S.R., statistics cannot be separated from economics either in the field of theory, in the

establishment of the methodology of study of new economic phenomena, or in practical work in the

accounting an analysis of primary statistical data.” See: A. Yugow. “Economic Statistics in the U.S.S.R.”

The Review of Economics and Statistics 29, no. 4 (November 1947): 243. Yugow is identified as a “Writer

on Russian Economics, New York City,” in the paratext to the journal issue.

162

Xu Qian. “Tongji xueshuo fazhan bianhua de lunkuo 统计学说发展变化的轮廓 (An Outline of the

Developments and Changes in Statsitical Theory).” In Tongjixue yuanli ziliao huibian 统计学原理资料汇

70

For Marx and Engels, and subsequently Lenin, Stalin and other Soviet thinkers,

there were no universal laws of economics and statistics. 163

Rather, different historical

epochs and different social systems generated different statistical and economic laws.

Accordingly, as A. Yugow noted in a 1947 review of Soviet statistics, it was felt that:

the statistical methods applied in the accounting of the results of private

economic activity, and the patterns established for economies in which the

chief economic regulating forces are the laws of supply and demand, have

proven inapplicable to statistical accounting in a planned state economy.164

The nature of the economy and social organization of a particular country, which, in turn,

reflected a particular stage in its history, required its own sets of statistical and economic

laws. The distinction between the laws that govern society, and thus appropriately

belonged to social science, and those that govern nature, was one that could not be

surmounted. On numerous occasions Marx identified statistics as a weapon that could be

used in service to the proletariat classes, especially by providing trenchant critiques of

existing political-economic conditions and as a tool for the realization of workers’

statistics. In such a formulation, statistics was fundamentally political arithmetic and

Marx regarded William Petty, the originator of the phrase, as the founder of both

statistics and political economy.165

编 (Compilation of Materials on Statistical Theory). Beijing: Zhongyang guangbo dianshi daxue chubanshe,

1983, 24.

163

“…Every special historical mode of production has its own special laws of population, historically valid

within its limits alone. A single Law of Population properly so called, exists for plants and animals only,

and only in so far man has not interfered with them.” See: Karl Marx. Capital, Volume 1: A Critique of

Political Economy (Translated by Samuel Moore, Edward Bibbins Aveling, and Ernest Untermann , edited

by Frederick Engels). London: Modern Library, 1906, 645.

164

Yugow 1947: 243.

165

“William Petty, the father of Political Economy, and to some extent the founder of Statistics…” See

Marx 1906: 179; Accessed online: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-

Volume-I.pdf). For Marx, William Petty symbolized a leap in quality as far as statistical activities were

concerned. See: Xu Qian 1983: 18-21. On Marx and his views on William Petty, also see: Ted McCormick.

71

While Marx may not have enjoyed the real political power necessary to put many

of these ideas about the distinctions between the natural and social world into action, his

intellectual heirs were in positions to do so. They were able to apply statistics to statecraft:

to use it as a tool not just for analysis and critique but also for administering change. The

manner in which they chose to do this had implications for the evolution of statistics. For

instance, in picking up Marx’s mantle, Lenin also gave primacy to statistics as a practical

tool, going to the extent even of de-emphasizing academically oriented activities among

statisticians.166

He was especially keen on making the Soviet Central Statistical Board the

primary source for all data relating to society and economy. In a letter to the Board, Lenin

noted that “the Central Statistical Board, which lags behind an unofficial group of writers,

is a model bureaucratic institution. In about two years’ time it may provide a heap of data

for research, but that is not what we want.” He proceeded to demand that “for our

practical work we must have figures and the Central Statistical Board must have

them before anybody else.”167

[Emphasis in original]

The result, initially in the Soviet Union and subsequently in the places where its

influence extended, was to create a distinction in statistical practice and, eventually, in

statistics as a discipline. Fueled by such an understanding of human activity and how to

William Petty: And the Ambitions of Political Arithmetic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. The

epilogue, in particular, discusses what McCormick calls Marx’s resurrection of Petty as the founder of

modern political economy.

166

In a letter dated May 26 1921 to his friend, the economist, planner and then chief of GOSPLAN, G. M.

Krzhizhanovsky, Lenin observed: “The Central Statistical Board should be made into an organisation that

does analysis for us, current, not “scientific” analysis…Statisticians must be our practical assistants, not

engage in scholastics.” [Emphasis in original] See: Lenin Collected Works, Volume 35: 497-498.

Source: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/may/26gmk.htm. The latter half of the citation

above, about practical assistants, is also quoted in Kotz 1990: 87.

167

V.I. Lenin. “To The Manager of the Central Statistical Board,” dated August 16 1921. See: Lenin’s

Collected Works, Volume 33: 30-35. Accessed from:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/aug/16.htm

72

account for it, an understanding of statistics that was specific, context-based, and non-

universal, had begun to attain legitimacy by the 1930s.

Statistics [thus] became an instrument for planning the national economy.

Consequently, its basis is the Marx-Lenin political economy; it represents

a social science or, in other words, a class science. The law of large

numbers, the idea of random deviations, and everything else belonging to

the mathematical theory of statistics were swept away as the constituent

elements of the false universal theory of statistical science.”168

Prior to the 1930s, Russian and Soviet statisticians had enjoyed a fair degree of freedom

and saw themselves as participants in the evolving universal discipline of statistics, the

bedrock of which was mathematics itself. Keenly aware of global developments in the

field, they also actively sought engagement with methods devised outside the Soviet

Union. The application of theory to practical problems was a hallmark of this period.169

But this was also the period during which numbers as measures of performance became

absolutely critical. As Michael D. Gordin has observed in his review of two studies on

Russian and Stalinist statistics: “For the Soviet state, given its self-professed character as

a scientific state, these numbers become crucial for measures of how much socialism was

an improvement over tsarist capitalism…”170

As a result, statisticians came under a

168

S.S. Zarkovic. “Note on the History of Sampling Methods in Russia.” Journal of the Royal Statistical

Society. Series A (General) 119, no. 3 (1956): 336-338. See 338 for quote.

169

For recent histories of statistics during Tsarist Russia and the early Soviet Union see: Martine Mespoulet.

Statistique et révolution en Russie: Un compromise impossible (1880–1930) [Statistics and Revolution in

Russia: An ImpossibleCompromise (1880–1930)]. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2001; and

Alain Blum and Martine Mespoulet. L’anarchie bureaucratique: Statistique et pouvoir sous Staline

[Bureaucratic Anarchy: Statistics and Power under Stalin]. Paris: La Découverte, 2003. A useful summary

and review of both volumes is: Gordin 2004. For contemporary accounts of early Soviet statistical work

and organization, also see: A. Ezhov. Soviet Statistics. Translated by V. Shneerson. Moscow : Foreign

Languages Publishing House, 1957; and A. Ezhov. Organisation of Statsitics in the U.S.S.R. Moscow:

Progress Publishers, 1967.

170

Gordin 2004: 807.

73

tremendous amount of pressure, both in terms of how they understood their discipline and

also in terms of the actual numbers they produced and analyzed.171

By the late 1930s, Vestnik Statistiki, the leading statistics journal in the Soviet

Union, had begun to reject submissions that used mathematical approaches in dealing

with statistical problems. As a result, over the course of the 1930s and 1940s, large

numbers of statisticians withdrew from statistical work, finding a relative safe haven in

universities or research institutes where they could continue their statistical research

without identifying it as such.172

The practitioners of statistics, in turn, grew increasingly

ignorant of the latest statistical methods and their potential applications to statistical

work.173

Indeed, by the 1930s, the “most persistent difficulty for these statisticians

stemmed from their dual task: they were supposed to provide accurate numbers for the

five-year plans, but they also had to suppress real economic and demographic data that

171

For instance, Pavel Il’ich Popov, the first director of the Soviet Statistics Bureau had argued in a letter to

Stalin on 22 December 1925 that there was no difference between socialist and bourgeois statistics. He was

subsequently removed from his post the following year. Gordin 2004: 809, citing Blum and Mespoulet.

172

Symptomatic is the case of someone like Andrey Kolmogorov (1903-1987), recognized as among the

leading probabalists of his time, but who was rarely of interest to statisticians within the USSR. It is indeed

possible that a general disciplinary demarcation may have also had the benefit of freeing up the harder

sciences, most notably nuclear research, which could then use advanced mathematical statistics without

falling prey to ideological battles. Such an analysis was offered by the commentator (identified as J.M.) to

an essay on the 1954 Soviet meeting on statistics: “One very practical reason for this distinction [the

bifurcation of statistics and mathematical statistics] is the need to legitimize statistical work in technology

and the natural sciences, which was questioned by some attitudes of Marxist orthodoxy expressed in the

published discussion. Now that such work is labelled [sic] mathematical statistics and thus distinguished

from socio-economic statistics, it can be pursued with freedom from doubts induced by high theory.” On

Kolmogorov, see: D.G. Kendall 1991. "Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov, 25 April 1903-20 October

1987". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 37 (1991): 300–26; on Kolmogorov and

Soviet statistics, see: P.C. Mahalanobis. Some Impressions of a Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957: 5.

PCMMA, Kolkata; and on freeing up certain technical sciences, see: J.M. and K.V. Ostrovitianov 1955.

“The Discussion on Statistics Summed Up.” Soviet Studies 6, no. 3 (Jan. 1955): 321-331.. See 321 for

quote.

173

Zarkovic 1956.

74

contradicted the official picture.”174

In Blum and Mespoulet’s formulation, “in the hybrid

that was Soviet Statistics, the Soviet triumphed over the Statistics.”175

This dichotomy

extended into the 1950s and was clearly visible to outside observers. During his 1957

visit to the PRC, the Indian statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (more on this visit

in Part III), informed his Chinese hosts that ever since 1947 the Soviet Union had not

attended any sample surveys activities organized by the International Statistical Institute,

adding that they just did not attach importance to mathematical statistics.176

The

separation of mathematical statistics from statistical work, of theory from practical

application, was complete.

Confusion over the true definition and status of statistics, however, lingered until

it was officially resolved in 1954. It was only through a national conference held in

Moscow from 16 to 26 March that year that what had for the most part already occurred

in practice was also given an official and final imprimatur.177

Organized by the Soviet

Academy of Sciences, the Central Statistical Board, and the Ministry of Higher Education,

the conference’s purpose was “to discuss matters in dispute and to examine the subject

and method of statistical science.”178

In all, 760 invitations were issued across the various

174

Gordin 2004: 809.

175

Gordin 2004: 808.

176

WJB 105-00530-06: 15

177

Ostrovitianov 1955: 321. This article is a translation from the Russian original, which was published in

Vestnik Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1954 No.8. K.V. Ostrovitianov, the author of the report, is identified as “the

chief organizer of Soviet economists.” In his commentary to the article, J.M. noted that “Ostrovitianov’s

main point, broadly stated, is that, at the present time at any rate, the name statistics should be limited to

the discipline and practice of which handle the quantitative aspects of socio-economic phenomena; that this

is the only statistical discipline deserving the status of science in its own right; and that statistical work on

natural and technological phenomena is most conveniently regarded as a branch of mathematics, namely

mathematical statistics.”

178

Ostrovitianov 1955: 323.

75

Soviet Republics.179

The majority of those invited were academic and practicing

statisticians, and they were joined by smaller numbers of economists, engineers,

mathematicians, philosophers and medical men. In all, sixty people spoke at the

conference and twenty sent in written contributions. Three principal points of view

emerged during the conference. The first held that statistics was a universal science that

studies phenomena of society and nature. The second posited that statistics was a social

science concerned with method, a system of principles for collecting quantitative

information in order to characterize social phenomenon. The final view was that statistics

was a social science that only studies social productive relations, that is, the economy.180

Over the conference’s ten days, the first two views were discussed and eventually

summarily rejected. Proponents of the first claim, which was no different from views in

the “bourgeois liberal” West, were accused of a “gross error in attempting, with the help

of a single science of statistics, to study by the same methods the phenomena both of

nature and of social science.”181

This error was not just a scientific one but also had moral

dimensions, for, as Ostrovitianov declared in his report on the conference:

The comrades who regard statistics as a universal science which studies

nature and society make of it some kind of science over and above the

[socio-economic] classes, coldly indifferent to good and to evil, without

any preference at all as between [socio-economic] classes and between

social structures.182

179

Invitations went out to (name of modern republic in parenthesis): Leningrad (Russia), Kiev (Ukraine),

Minsk (Belarus), Baku (Azerbaijian), Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Tbilisi (Georgia), Riga (Latvia), Erivan

(Armenia), Alma-Ata (Kazakhistan), Kharkov (Ukraine), Sverdlovsk (Ukraine), and Irkutsk (Russia).

180

Ostrovitianov 1955: 323-324.

181

Ostrovitianov 1955: 324.

182

Ostrovitianov 1955: 326 .

76

In support of this claim, Ostrovitianov offered a criticism of the false comparison made

by other participants who drew upon similarities between the luminosity of stars and the

grouping (categorization) of the peasantry.

What can there be in common between the grouping of stars according to

their luminosity and, let us say, Lenin’s grouping of the peasantry

according to their [socio-economic] class characteristics? Nothing, other

than certain technical statistical devices used in the study of these totally

different kinds of phenomena. The grouping of stars according to

luminosity requires no class analysis at all, whereas in investigating the

differentiation of the peasantry we must make a [socio-economic] class

analysis of this phenomenon, proceeding from the postulates of historical

materialism and political economy. Statistical devices and methods of

investigation, the choice of characteristics for grouping, the combining of

groups, were entirely without exception subordinated by Lenin to the task

of [socio-economic] class analysis of the rural population.183

[Emphasis

added]

Ostrovitianov conceded that quantitative relations in their pure form—equally applicable

to “inorganic nature, to organic nature and to the domain of the social sciences”—could

be studied by mathematics, more specifically by the subdomain of mathematical statistics.

But apart from this branch of mathematical statistics, and the socio-economic science of

statistics, there did not exist a third “non-mathematical but nevertheless universal

‘general’ statistics.”184

This distinction formed the basis of the rebuttal of the second

claim, that statistics was a science of method. “Every social science,” Ostrovitianov

explained, “has not only its own subject, but also its own method of investigation.”

Furthermore, he noted that in political economy, the method employed was abstraction

(historical materialism in the sphere of economic relations), and not, quoting Marx, a

183

Ostrovitianov 1955: 326.

184

Ostrovitianov 1955: 326. “Thus, there is no scientific grounds for a universal statistics as an independent

discipline which studies both nature and society. It would be an extremely meagre science made up of some

statistical devices which are used in all branches of knowledge, and would hang somewhere between socio-

economic and mathematical statistics.”

77

microscope or chemical reagents.185

Thus, it was decided that only in the field of the

study of social phenomena did statistics reach the level of an independent science, with

its own subject and methods of investigation.186

And so, following almost two weeks of deliberation and debate, the conference

was in a position to offer a definition of statistics.

“Statistics is an independent social science. It studies the quantitative

aspects of mass social phenomena in full awareness of and therefore

within their qualitative aspect; it investigates the quantitative expression of

the laws of social development in the specific conditions of place and

time.”187

Statistics was thus to serve, in the words of Lenin, as the “rock of exact and indisputable

facts,” the very foundation on which rested not just political economy but all other social

sciences as well. The effect, in the end, was to ratify and reify a distinction that was

already fairly well entrenched: that between statistics and mathematical statistics.188

Chance Tamed; Chance Rejected

Trygvie Lie’s desire for “clear and systematically organized facts” thus found an echo in

Lenin’s evocation of statistics as the “rock of exact and indisputable facts.” But while

such a desire united the universalist claim and its Marxist critique, the contrasting

understandings of statistics within each positioned them at loggerheads when it came to

185

It is indeed not clear how abstraction, a verb, can be equated to nouns such as microscope and chemical

reagents in ascribing to them all the category of method.

186

Ostrovitianov 1955: 327.

187

Ostrovitianov 1955: 328.

188

It is worth noting that such a distinction might also have had the benefit of freeing up the harder sciences,

most notably research related to nuclear and missile technology, which could then freely use advanced

mathematical statistics without falling prey to ideological imperatives. See the introduction to

Ostrovitianov’s report by J.M.: Ostrovitianov 1955: 321. On a related discussion concerning the status of

other mathematical fields such as game theory (whose applications were also proscribed) and cybernetics

(which flourished), see Erickson et al 2013: 17-20.

78

questions of theory and method. The contradictory claims regarding statistics’

universality outlined above were undergirded by two fundamentally different ontological

positions on how social reality could be ascertained via quantification. The first, as we

have seen, by embracing uncertainty, accepted its own limits. Chance and error were seen

to be part of the natural order of things. Not everything could be counted, at least not

accurately, and even more to the point, all attempts at counting generated errors. The

goalposts accordingly shifted: Intellectual energy was no longer channeled towards

devising methods to count exhaustively, but instead, to devising methods for studying

variation, and eventually toward how to accurately determine, control, and minimize the

error that resulted during any count. Probability, the law of large numbers, and general

mathematical reasoning, thus, became crucial tools in devising new methods of counting

and assessment.

Table 1

Statistics

Socialist Statistics

Statistics is a Universal Science

Statistics is a Social Science

Chance exists, randomness part of both

natural and social order of things

No chance in the social world (only laws that

can be ascertained)

All counting generates errors;

can devise methods to ascertain and control

error of any count

Can count everything accurately;

the best count is the complete count

Key Methods:

Key Methods:

Law of Large Numbers

Exhaustive Enumeration

Probability Theory

Typical Sampling

Variance, Correlation, Regression

Random Sampling

79

This was in stark contrast to the second approach, which, fueled by the

teleological inevitability of Marxist historical progression and by the confidence offered

by dialectical materialism, was predicated on the absence of chance and uncertainty in the

social world. As long as particular attention was paid to time, place, and stage of

historical evolution, not only could everything be accurately counted, but it must be

counted. Within such an ontological world-view there was no place for probability, the

law of large numbers, or any kind of abstract mathematical thought. The social world had

no chaos, only laws of production, population, and relations, all of which could be

discovered via measurement. The result was an emphasis on complete enumeration—the

counting of everything. In other words, just as the liberal tradition pivoted on the

appreciation and eventual acceptance of uncertainty, chance, probability, and error in the

world and in counting, so did the Socialist-Marxist critique base itself on the comfort of

certainty, and the desire to enumerate and account for everything.

In taming and rejecting chance, both traditions were interested in increasing

overall control. But they had very different expectations about what they could control.

And each approach taken to its extreme could also lead to perversions in social outcomes.

Within neoliberal economics, this emphasis on error, accuracy, and calculability would

lead to a stark distinction between uncertainty and risk. Unlike the former, the latter was

calculable, and therefore, could be used as the basis for decision-making. For this very

reason, uncertainty came to be discounted in the design of economic models, which over

time contributed to an increasing disengagement with real-world actions.189

The most

189

The distinction between uncertainty and risk in the sphere of economic activity was articulated by

Keynes as early as the 1920s. For how uncertainty, at least in the American Economics Academy, has

largely been written out in favor of risk, which is calculable, see: Peter Katzenstein and Stephen Nelson.

“Worlds in Collision: Uncertainty and Risk in Hard Times.” In Politics in the New Hard Times: The Great

80

recent instance of this is the 2008 financial crisis, with its basis in increasingly

sophisticated mathematical models that were supremely confident in their ability to

ascertain and account for risk.190

As we shall see in Part II, socialist statistics’ fetishization of complete

enumeration would also lead to certain systemic cul-de-sacs. But the illusion of control

this method offered was extremely attractive. As A. Yugow noted in his review of Soviet

statistics in 1947:

Accounting of all economic phenomena on a national scale and the

possibility of statistically following all economic phenomena in their

complete economic cycle give Soviet statistics such great advantages in

comparison with the statistics of other countries, that the forms, methods,

and the results of the work of the statistical organs of the U.S.S.R. are

highly instructive to all who work in the field of the theory and practice of

economic statistics, even in cases when these data are not entirely exact

and commensurable in particulars. The gathering of primary materials, the

formulation of problems, and the effect of the plan upon economic factors

in the U.S.S.R. provide an almost “laboratory” picture; in any case, they

reflect the existing facts far more clearly and fully than in other countries,

where the statistical study of national problems and those of individual

branches is not only greatly complicated, in view of the technical

incompleteness of the data, but is also deliberately distorted because of

private interests, trade secrets, competition, etc.191

From a planning perspective, the promise of achieving data collection on a national scale,

and thereby (in theory at least) ensuring that all manner of economic activity was

accounted for was hard to resist. It was also the kind of comprehensiveness that non-

Recession in Comparative Perspective, edited by Miles Kahler and David Lake, 233-52. Ithaca: Cornell

University Press, 2013.

190

For a fascinating study of the role of risk and uncertainty management in precipitating two earlier

financial crashes (the stock market crash of 1987 and the market turmoil that engulfed the hedge fund

Long-Term Capital Management in 1998), see: Donald A. MacKenzie. An Engine, Not a Camera: How

Financial Models Shape Markets. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.

191

Yugow 1947: 244.

81

socialist countries with their decentralized statistical apparatus found impossible to

achieve.

In many parts of the world, and especially in much of the future global south,

these strengths of the Soviet system were seen as the basis for its economic performance.

For instance, the Indian industrialists who drafted the Bombay Plan in 1944 wrote with

admiration and aspiration:

This [growth target for India] might appear to be too modest a goal for a

planned economy to achieve, especially in view of the fact that in the

U.S.S.R., within a period of 12 years since the beginning of the first Five-

Year Plan, the national income is reported to have increased from 25

billion rubles to 125 billion rubles, i.e., five-fold.192

Even so, in India, such high regard for planned economic growth did not extend to an

adoption of Soviet socialist statistics. In China, however, adoption of Soviet socialist

statistics in the years after 1949 was enthusiastic and comprehensive. Even as late as

1957, by which time tensions between China and the Soviet Union had become

increasingly evident, Xue Muqiao, the director of the State Statistics Bureau noted in an

editorial:

[We must] seriously study the Soviet Union’s advanced experience in

constructing and managing a socialist economy, especially its experience

in the planned management of the people’s economy and in the

establishment of planning and statistical work.193

192

Memorandum Outlining a Plan of Economic Development for India. Penguin Edition, 1944, 29. This

was given as the reason for hoping for a 200% jump in national income in 15 years. Also quoted in:

Seymour E. Harris 1947. “Appraisals of Russian Economic Statistics—Introduction.” The Review of

Economics and Statistics 29, no. 4 (November 1947): 213. This is not to say that Indian statisticians and

economists accepted Soviet statistical theory, but that they were no doubt impressed with what the Soviet

Union had achieved in the three decades since its inception. See Part III for more on Indian statistics during

this period.

193

Xue Muqiao. “我国的计划工作和统计工作必须向苏联学习 Woguo de jihua gongzuo he tongji

gonzuo bixu xiang sulian xuexi (Our Nation’s Planning and Statistics Work must learn from the Soviet

Union).” RMRB, November 12 1957, 7.

82

In order to achieve this, Xue and the SSB relied heavily on Soviet statistical experts and

the expertise and experience to which they laid claim. It was upon their advice that the

PRC’s comprehensive statistical system was envisioned and its construction attempted.

Soviet Experts in China—the General Story

In his magisterial 1987 study of the PRC’s economic development, Carl Riskin observed

that Mao’s phrase of “leaning to one side” anticipated, in a sense, the long-term

unsustainability of Sino-Soviet cooperation. This did not, Riskin clarified, mean that

Soviet contributions to Chinese development were insignificant.194

Rather, it serves to

caution us against assuming that the PRC blindly emulated the Soviet model. As much

recent scholarship (discussed below) has shown, the real story is far more complex.

The general facts of Sino-Soviet cooperation during the 1950s are now fairly well

known.195

In February 1950, the two nations signed the thirty-year Sino-Soviet Treaty of

Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Aid.196

In the event, Soviet financial aid was rather

limited. For instance, of the total investment in the first Five Year Plan (1953-57), the

Soviet share was as little as 3%.197

But the aid took non-financial, non-materiel forms as

well. From August 1952 to May 1953 Zhou Enlai led a Chinese delegation to the Soviet

Union with the express purpose of drawing up the country’s first Five Year Plan with the

194

Carl Riskin. China’s Political Economy—The Quest for Development since 1949. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1987, 60.

195

Soviet aid as sharing of technical knowledge was discussed fairly early by Barry Naughton. In more

recent years, this aid has been understood from a variety of perspectives and sources. See discussion below

196

For an interesting analysis of the negotiations involving the signing of the treaty, during what was Mao’s

first foreign tour, see Yang Kuisong 杨奎松. “The Sino-Soviet Alliance and Nationalism: A Contradiction.”

Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The Cold War History of Sino-Soviet Relations,

June 2005. (Originally published in Social Sciences in China (English Edition), Spring 2005.)

197

Meisner 1999: 112-113. Also see: Riskin 1987: 74-77.

83

help of Soviet experts.198

Indeed, equally significant, if not more so, was aid that took the

form of imparting technical expertise and experience.199

Until recently, this aid had remained a relatively understudied subject and it is

only in the last fifteen years or so that it has begun to receive significant scholarly

attention. The opening of archives, both in the former Soviet republics as well as in China,

has allowed scholars to explore this relationship in much greater detail, focusing on the

men, materiel, and technology that formed its basis.200

These studies generally conclude

that from 1949 to 1956 China emulated, if not always uncritically, the Soviet experience.

Chinese conviction in following the Soviet Union’s ‘advanced experience’ 先進經驗

began to weaken in 1956, and by 1960, with the Sino-Soviet split, stood entirely

repudiated.201

Soviet advisors and specialists in China have also received focused attention in

recent years. Deborah Kaple was among the first scholars to address this subject by

cobbling together scattered and frequently fragmentary Soviet archival materials and

combining them with oral interviews of several men and women who had served as

198

Bernstein and Li 2010: 12. 156 plants were also delivered as part of Soviet aid during the plan years.

199

Meisner 1999: 113. Meisner notes that as many as 12,000 Soviet and East European experts were sent to

China in the 1950s (a more recent estimate is discussed below). In return some 6,000 students trained in

modern science and technology in Soviet universities and 7,000 workers gained experience in factories.

Another estimate is provided by Izabella Goikhman, who suggests as many as 20,000 Chinese students,

technicians and scholars studied in or visited the Soviet Union in the 1950s. See Izabella Goikhman.

“Soviet-Chinese Academic Interactions in the 1950s.”In Bernstein and Li 2010: 275-302. Shen Zhihua

estimates an even higher number: 38,000. See Shen 2003: 405.

200

Among the first in this new wave to explore these questions was the edited volume Westad 1998. The

latest and most comprehensive work that covers not just the 1950s but brings the story up to the present is

the Bernstein and Li edited volume published in 2010. The Sino-Soviet split has also received a fresh

treatment in Lorenz Luthi’s excellent multi-archival work; see: Lorenz M. Lüthi. The Sino-Soviet Split:

Cold War in the Communist World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

201

Bernstein and Li 2010: 3.

84

specialists in China.202

Some of her findings were that the specialists were predominantly

men, that they stayed from as little as a few months to a year, and that they were not well

supervised once they arrived in China. Most of the specialists had a hard time

establishing personal friendships with locals. Conversely, the Chinese frequently

complained about the quality of the specialists being sent to them. Building and

substantially expanding on Kaple’s work, in 2003 Shen Zhihua published what remains

the most detailed study of Soviet specialists in China.203

According to Shen, the twelve years from 1948 to 1960 can be divided into four

distinct periods.204

The first, from 1948-49 was marked by a Soviet policy of wait and

watch. The years from 1949 to 1953 witnessed the beginning of exchanges, but one

where the experts were found predominantly either in military affairs or in specific

industrial sectors. Agreeing with this assessment of a limited engagement during this

phase, Izabella Goikhman has observed that until 1953 interactions were largely

characterized by the exchange of publications. Even so, according to Shen’s findings,

about 5,000 Soviet experts, including those working with the armed forces, were in China

during this period. It is only after 1953 that academic exchanges were institutionalized

and visiting personnel increased in number.205

The late 1952 slogan “completely study

the Soviet Union”全面學習蘇聯 marked the beginning of this period for Shen. The four

years starting from 1954 were the high tide 高潮 of Soviet experts in China. As many as

202

Deborah A. Kaple. “Soviet Advisors in China in the 1950s.” In Westad 1998: 117-140.

203

Shen 2003. Shen made extensive use of archives in both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic and

was able to augment his findings with several oral interviews.

204

For a general summary of this periodization, see Shen 2003: 405-410.

205

Goikhman 2010: 282.

85

11,000 visited and provided their technical expertise and experience. For the visiting

experts this was also a period when the work environment was at its best, when Chinese

eagerness to learn was at its most earnest. This was also, however, the period when

finding China’s own path began to be openly discussed in certain areas. By 1956, the first

doubts about the Soviet model had begun to be articulated. Even so, in the field of

science and technology, studying the Soviet Union’s methods was still the pre-eminent

strategy.206

In the final phase, 1958-60, Shen finds a gradual decline and then the sudden

withdrawal of all experts in 1960. He calculates 2,000 Soviet experts were in China

during these final years, leaving us with a total of 18,000 Soviet experts over the course

of the 12 year period.

Soviet Statistical Experts

In spite of the varied and contingent nature of Chinese engagement with Soviet aid and

expertise, statistics was one area in which Soviet impact was seminal and long-lasting.

While it is difficult to assess how many out of Shen Zhihua’s estimated 18,000 Soviet

experts were statisticians, we can identify several key figures who were assigned to

important positions as consultants at the SSB or at major educational and cadre training

institutions such as People’s University 人民大学.207

The first mention of Soviet

statistical expertise is found in Wang Sihua’s speech of 1950. In it he observed that the

Soviet Central Statistics Bureau was personally overseen by Molotov 莫洛托夫, a fact

206

Shen 2003: 18.

207

Such information can likely be obtained from materials in the Archives of the State Statistics Bureau,

but I was unable to gain access to the SSB Archives.

86

which indicated the importance that the Soviets attached to statistics.208

He was therefore

appreciative of the help offered by Soviet Statistical advisors as the Northeast Statistics

Bureau (NSB) went about organizing and carrying out statistical work.209

Some years

later, Yang Jianbai 杨坚白, Wang’s deputy at the NSB, reiterated the importance of

Soviet expertise for the NSB’s statistical work. In an article in the People’s Daily he

reaffirmed the need to take the Soviet Union as their teacher 以俄为师, adding: “The

Soviet Union’s advanced statistical experience is abundant and completely correct, and

we must study well her experience.”210

The Soviet statistical advisors who assisted the NSB (and later the SSB) operated

solidly within a tradition of socialist statistics. Their own experience in the Soviet Union

had primarily focused on statistical work and not research in any other discipline. And

they brought their specific understanding of statistics to the PRC. They belonged to a

group that would have whole-heartedly agreed with the conclusions drawn at the 1954

meeting in Moscow. As Xue Muqiao 薛暮桥, the first director of the State Statistics

Bureau, would recall in his memoirs, the Soviet experts were decidedly un-enthusiastic

about the use of sampling of any kind. In his words, “Soviet statistical experts did not

208

Wang Sihua 1952: 8. This is very likely a reference to Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov в

й ов о отов (1890-1986), of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of non-aggression between the

USSR and the Third Reich. A major politician, politburo member, and diplomat, Molotov had served till

1949 as the Soviet Union's Minister for Foreign Affairs. Oddly enough, the paragraph that mentions

Molotov was excised from the version of the speech that was reproduced in the 1986 compilation of

Wang’s writings on statistics. Cf. Wang 1986: 3.

209

Wang Sihua 1953: 8 and Wang Sihua 1986: 45. For some examples of how Soviet advice and

experience was put into practice in the Northeast, see: Wang 1953: 8 and Wang Sihua 1986: 45-46.

210

Yang 1953: 3. Yang was the Secretary-General and Deputy Director of the Northeast Statistics Bureau

from 1951 to 1954, when he was transferred to the main offices of the State Statistics Bureau in Beijing. At

the SSB, Yang specialized in National Income Accounting. In 1956 he was deputized/transferred to the

State Planning Commission.

87

promote the use of surveys, [but rather] advocated making comprehensive arrangements

for statistical reports.”211

At one point, he and Li Fuchun had attempted to have V.N.

Starovskiy’s book Sample Surveys 《抽样调查》issued for study by the Planning

Commission and the SSB, but they were blocked by the Soviet statistical experts present

in Beijing.212

Thus, from the very beginning, the advice the Chinese received, and which

they valued highly, was about the primacy of socialist statistics, and the concomitant

irrelevance of abstract mathematics.

The first among a series of high-level Soviet statistical experts deputized by the

Soviet Central Statistical Administration to serve in the PRC was A.I. Ezhov (A. E. Ежов;

叶若夫).213

Ezhov arrived in the PRC in early 1950 and returned to the Soviet Union in

February 1952. In the Soviet Union, Ezhov was a Deputy Director of the Central

Statistical Administration and as such brought with him the prestige of his high office.214

As the first Soviet statistical expert, Ezhov quite possibly had the greatest impact in

211

Xue 2006: 174.

212

斯塔洛夫斯基 о ов т о в й Vladimir Nikanovich Starovskiy (1905—1975),

was the head the Soviet Central Statistical Administration from 1940 to 1975. Xue claimed in his memoirs,

that Starovskiy had personally presented him with a copy of this book during his 1954 visit to Moscow. See:

Xue 2006: 174.

213

A few different versions of the name in Chinese exist: in the DSJ he is identified as 叶诺夫 [yenuofu],

in a Beijing Statistics Bureau document located in the Beijing Municipal Archives he is called 叶若夫

[yeruofu]; and in an NSB publication he is listed as 叶饶夫. The last transliteration is the closest

approximation of his actual name. Cf. DSJ: 2; BMA 002-020-00969: 6; and Tongji gongzuo—disan xuanji

统计工作—第三选辑: table of contents. On the general problems with transliterations of Russian names

during the 1950s, see fn 217 below.

214

Ezhov also played a key role in disseminating information about Soviet statistics to a wider audience,

both in Russian and in other languages. Among his works that were translated into English are: (1) Ezhov

1957; (2) A. Ezhov. Industrial Statisitcs [Ru.: STATISTIKA PROMYSHLENNOSTI]. Calcutta: Statistical

Publishing House, 1958; and (3) Ezhov 1967.

88

shaping statistical work in the PRC.215

During his two years in the PRC, he consulted

with the Statistical Office of the National Finance Committee 中财委统计总处, played a

critical role in helping the NSB design statistical work, and was instrumental in offering

advice and general guidelines for the establishment of a national statistical system.216

Ezhov was followed at the SSB by four statistical experts in succession (See table

2 below). Sergei Krotevich (S. К от в ; 克拉特维奇), who spent a little over three years in

the PRC, was the first among them. In addition to acting as a consultant on financial

economics, he also played a key role in designing and carrying out the 1953 national

census. An expert by the name of Semodzhefgin (Ru: о ж фг (?); Ch:谢木杰夫金)

arrived on 22 July 1955.217

A specialist in infrastructure statistics 基建统计, he stayed in

the PRC for about three years. The next expert to arrive was Maximov (Ru: ов; Ch:

马克西莫夫), who stayed until1957. The last expert [that I could locate] arrived on 11

December 1957 but spent less than a year in the PRC, returning to the Soviet Union on 11

June of the following year.

215

In addition to appearing with regularity in published and archival materials, Ezhov was also the Soviet

expert whose name was recalled most frequently by several of my interviewees. The possibility remains

that this is a result of the fact that his name was relatively easier to pronounce, and therefore, to remember.

216

On the latter, see the discussion in Part II, Chapter I.

217

The transliteration of Russian names during this period appears not to have followed a consistent

method of concordance between the Cyrillic alphabet and Chinese characters. As a result, I have been

unable to ascertain some of the names, for which the source was only the transliterated Chinese name.

Semodzhefgin (谢木杰夫金 in the Chinese) is one such case. Another is Suparin (素包里 in the Chinese).

In both cases, handbooks of Russian-Chinese names, which I consulted to arrive at guesses of the names in

Cyrillic, have proven less instructive than hoped. The input of Russian and Chinese speakers has also, thus

far, not offered any resolutions. Cf. Xin Hua 辛华, ed. Eyu xingming yiming shouce 俄语姓名译名手册

(Handbook of Translations of Russian Names). Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan 商务印书馆 (Commercial

Press), 1982. See in particular Appendix 5 which is a Russian-Chinese Transliteration Table 俄汉译音表.

89

Table 2: Soviet Statistical Experts at the SSB218

Dates in the PRC

Name in

Chinese Name in Pinyin Cyrillic Name in English

Early 1950 -

February 1952 叶诺夫

219 Ye nuo fu A. E. Ежов A. I. Ezhov

February 1952 -

July 1955 克拉特维奇 Ke la te wei qi S. К от в Sergei Krotevich

July 22 1954 - (for

about 3 years) 谢木杰夫金 Xie mu jie fu jin о ж фг (?) Semodzhefgin (?)

August 22 1955 -

(for about 2 years) 马克西莫夫 Ma ke xi mu fu ов Maximov

December 11 1957

- June 11 1958 索包里 Su bao li уп (?) Suparin (?)

Broadly speaking, Soviet statistical experts such as these five were directly or indirectly

involved in three types of activities: consulting on the design and execution of statistical

work, aiding the publication of translations from Russian into Chinese, and directly

teaching statistical cadres.

Consultation

The most basic form of consultation involved introducing elements of the Soviet

statistical system and offering advice to Chinese statisticians on how to proceed with

setting up their own statistical system. Thus, for example, in late 1950 Ezhov introduced

the structure and key tasks of the Soviet system to statistical cadres in Beijing.220

Such

discussions usually involved a wide-ranging array of questions and topics, including how

to distinguish between agriculture and industry 工业与农业怎样划分, whether

handicrafts industries should be regarded as private industries, how statistical survey

218

Table compiled from: DSJ: 2, 6, 30, 39, 55-56.

219

Elsewhere listed as 叶若夫 Yeruofu. Cf. BMA 002-020-00969: 6

220

See Ezhov’s December 1950 speech at a meeting on statistical work in Beijing. BMA 002-020-00969:

5-6.

90

work should be organized, how analysis of data should be conducted, the importance of

original records 原始记录, and why statistics was a science of party spirit 党性的科

学.221

Soviet advisors were also direct participants in specific survey projects that were

initiated by the State Statistics Bureau or served as advisors at particular enterprises. For

instance, Sergei Krotevich offered key advice as the SSB carried out the first complete

modern census in China’s history in 1953.222

Data was collected across only four

parameters: name, age, sex, and nationality.223

Two and a half million central and local

government workers took part in the actual recording, and they were in turn aided by

volunteer census workers in the localities.224

Final enumerations and tabulations were

compiled by June of 1954, and on 1 November 1954, the SSB reported that on the

221

BMA 004-011-00019: 2-12, 13-18. These materials were based on notes from a lecture delivered by

Krotevich; the accompanying handwritten cover letter praised his exegesis and requested that the materials

be widely disseminated. See p. 1 for the cover letter.

222

The Qing government had attempted a complete enumeration in 1908, but that project had floundered in

the face of political exigencies and the eventual demise of the dynasty. The four decades leading up to the

50s had witnessed some surveys conducted by the Guomindang regime in the regions they controlled, but

nothing on a national scale. During the decade of the 1940s, scholars in Republican China had urged for the

administration of a census and the establishment of a census bureau. Foreign scholars too had noted the

need for a standardized census. But the civil war between the Guomindang and the Communists had

blocked the implementation of any of these recommendations. Since the establishment of the People’s

Republic of China, the Communists had made several attempts at deriving a new population total for the

country by collecting reports on the population through administrative channels. These efforts had resulted

in population totals of around 566 million. On the 1908 census, see Lam 2012; on foreign view of pre-1949

demographic activity, see: A.J. Jaffe. “A Review of the Censuses and Demographic Statistics of China.”

Population Studies 1, no. 3 (Feb. 1948): 308-337. (Jaffe noted that “at no time did the Government appear

to realize the value of accurate population data as such, and the data actually collected have been very

largely the by-products of inquires with more immediate administrative aims.”); on early PRC

administrative attempts at population reckoning, see: Chung Lin and Hsia Lu. “How We Made the Census.

China Reconstructs, no. 4 (December 1955): 9-11.

223

Chung Lin and Hsia Lu 1955: 9; on the question of nationality see: Mullaney 2011.

224

Chung Lin and Hsiao Lu 1955: 10.

91

midnight of 30 June 1953, the population on the Chinese mainland was 583.6 million.225

This number surprised many observers used to the League of Nations 1933 estimate of

around 450 million for Republican China.226

Krotevich himeself wrote a report on the

census in Russian published in Vestnik Statistiki in 1955. A Chinese language translation

was published the following year by the Statistical Press.227

In similar fashion, Soviet consultants also spent time at designated factories and

enterprises, helping them set up or rationalize statistical work. For instance, in an essay in

the journal Statistical Work the Anshan Iron and Steel Company’s Planning and Statistics

Office thanked the Soviet statistical expert 切布尔尼赫 [Qie bu er ni he; бу ;

Cheburnikh?] for his wide-ranging assistance. The essay explained that his with his help

they were able to appreciate what was distinctive about socialist statistics; improve

original records 原始记录; simplify forms; establish monthly, ten-day, and daily reports;

and initiate research and analysis.228

225

China State Statistical Bureau. “Communique of the Major Statistics from the first national population

census as related by the State Statistical Bureau of the People's Republic of China (November 1, 1954).”

Chinese Sociology and Anthropology 16, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer 1984): 62-5.

226

For a sense of the surprise and skepticism these results generated see John S. Aird. “China’s Population,

Census and Vital Statistics.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 56 (1961): 443; John S. Aird.

“Estimating China’s Population.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 369

(1967): 67-72; John S. Aird. “Sources of Demographic Data on Mainland China.” American Sociological

Review 24, no. 5 (1959): 623-630; Ansley J. Coale. Rapid Population Change in China 1952-1982.

Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1984; and G.B. Cressey. “The 1953 Census of China.” The

Far Eastern Quarterly 14, no. 3 (1955): 387-388. It is possible that none were aware of the early 1950s

estimates of 566 million noted above. Many may also have assumed that the disruptions caused by the civil

war may have served as a check on population growth.

227

See: Sergei K. Krotevich. “Vsekitayskaya perepis’ naseleniya 1953 g. (The All-China Population

Census of 1953).” Vestnik Statistiki (Journal of Statistics), no. 5 (September-October 1955): 31-50; and

Sergei K. Krotevich. Zhongguo 1953 nian quanguo renkou diaocha 中国 1953 年全国人口调查 (The All-

China Population Census of 1953). Beijing: Statistical Press, 1956.

228 Statistical Office of the Anshan Iron and Steel Company’s Planning Department 鞍钢计划处统计科

1957. See: “Ganxie sulian zhuanjia dui women de bangzhu 感谢苏联专家对我们的帮助 (Grateful Thanks

to the Soviet Experts for their Help).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作 (Statistical Work), 1957.21: 31-32.

92

Another important consulting task was the inspection of local statistical work.

From November to December 1955 the Soviet specialists Maximov 马克西莫夫 and Xie

Mu Te Jin 谢木特金 were accompanied by SSB Deputy Director Sun Yefang 孙冶方 on

a tour of Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Shanghai, with the goal of

understanding city- and province-level statistical work. Principal questions included how

to strengthen local statistical work, especially under the conditions brought about by the

high tide of cooperativization, and how to strengthen county, district, and

village/township level statistical work. On 18 January 1956 the team produced a report

that contained three key parts: First, it was severely critical of the work done by the

various provincial bureaus, noting that no matter how well the local or national bureaus

worked, the provincial bureaus did not show enough leadership. Their organization was

incomplete and their materials were either lacking in quality or late. Second, it offered

suggestions on how to strengthen province, district, and village level statistical work.

And third, it offered advice on how to set up a united and scientific agricultural survey

scheme.229

Publications

A second way in which Soviet experts contributed to statistical work in the PRC was by

aiding the translation of Soviet textbooks, organizing curricula at universities and training

centers, and compiling collections of special articles.230

The earliest compilations of the

229

DSJ: 43.

230

For more on Soviet advisors at major universities such as Renmin, Tsinghua, Peking, and so on, see:

(1) Yu Shengqi 俞圣祺. “Sulian zhuanjia bangzhu xia de zhongguo renmin daxue 在苏联专家帮助下的中

国人民大学 (The People’s University under the aid of Soviet Experts).” RMRB 1954 November 8, 2;

93

Northeast Statistics Bureau’s Statistical Work frequently contained a section entitled

“Introducing Soviet Experience”苏联经验介绍, which carried a few translated articles.

For most workers in the Northeast (and in the rest of the country) this was the first

opportunity to read about Soviet methods through the writings of Soviet statisticians. For

instance, a relatively early critique of bourgeois statistics can be found in an article by the

author N. 廖佐夫 (H. озов?; N. Liao zuo fu). 231

Each of the NSB’s compilations from

1950 to 1952 carried articles by Soviet statisticians, including in some cases by experts

who were present in the PRC as consultants.232

Subjects covered ranged widely,

including the meaning, role, and organization of economic statistics in the Soviet Union;

survey methods in the Soviet Union; the Soviet experience in unifying and simplifying

tables and reports; and a discussion of statistics in People’s Democracies. At the same

time, advice on how to deal with local statistical problems was also offered, and dwelt on

the role of city and village statistics, the methods of statistical and economic analysis, and

so on. By 1953, when several compilations had been produced, Soviet authors had largely

been replaced by Chinese authors and the experience discussed was primarily Chinese

experience of statistical work.

(2) Chen Jun 陈俊. “ Sulian zhuanjia zai Beijing daxue 苏联专家在北京大学 (Soviet Experts at Beijing

University).” RMRB 1953 September 16, 3;

(3) Bai Sheng 柏生. “Sulian zhuanjia zai qinghua daxue 苏联专家在清华大学 (Soviet Experts at Qinghua

University).” RMRB 1953 November 5, 3;

(4) Ge Jiali 葛家理. “Zai sulian zhuanjia de jiaodao xia 在苏联专家的教导下 (Under the Guidance of

Soviet Experts).” RMRB 1954 November 6, 2.

231

H. 廖佐夫. “Xin zhongguo tongji de gaikuang yu tongji gongzuozhe de renwu 新中国统计的概况与统

计工作者的任务 (Summary of Statistics in New China and the Tasks of Statistical Workers).” Tongji

gongzuo—disan xuanji 统计工作—第三选辑. Northeast Statistical Press (January 1952): 7-9, 10.

232

For instance, the 1951.2 compilation had articles by 叶饶夫 (叶若夫; Ezhov?); 巴巴勺夫; 杜伯维亦基;

索亲斯基; and 柴尔林合著; the 1952.1 by 叶饶夫 (叶若夫; Ezhov?); H. 廖佐夫; 沙拉保夫; and 赖绍多

夫; and the 1952.10 by 梅尔然诺夫 and 苏什诺夫.

94

With the establishment of the national State Statistics Bureau in August 1952,

much of the translation and editing work began to focus on textbooks.233

By September

1957 over 100 different items had been translated. Their scope was extremely wide: from

general outlines of principles of statistics to every kind of specialized statistics such as

industry, agriculture, capital construction, trade cooperation, supplies, transportation,

finance and economics, health and education, and so on. In addition to advanced texts for

specialists, several books were targeted toward the basic statistical worker and were

therefore at the middle-school or high-school level. Examples of such books, whose

publication runs were upwards of 20,000 or 30,000, included Statistical Theory 《统计理

论》by the Soviet State Statistics Bureau, Petrov’s (彼得洛夫 П т ов] Guide to

Economic Statistics 《经济统计学教程》, and Shaensky’s (沙文斯基 ш ы ) Guide to

Industrial Statistics 《工业统计学教程》. Starting in 1956, the Soviet and the Chinese

Departments of Culture began a collaboration, as a result of which many additional books

were received from the Soviet Union. The Chinese were also able to directly approach

many authors and request them to write forewords for the Chinese editions of their

books.234

Finally, starting in 1956, the Statistical Press also began producing compendia of

translated essays and articles. In 1957, it published a book containing transcripts of

selected talks by Soviet experts such as Maximov, Semodzhefgin, and others. The book

233

The establishment of the SSB is discussed in Part II Chapter I.

234

See: Anon. “Banian lai woguo fanyi chuban le daliang sulian tongji xuezhezuo—woguo tongji

chubanshe kaishi yu sulian tongji xuejie jianli youyi de lianxi 八年来我国翻译出版了大量苏联统计学著

作—我国统计出版社开始与苏联统计学界建立友谊的联系 (We Have Translated a Large Number of

Works by Soviet Statisticians in the Past Eight Years).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作 (1957.20): 33.

95

touched upon various standard topics of statistical work, ranging across the various

sectors of the economy and discussing methods of collection and analysis.235

Also begun

in 1956 was a series titled Collected Translations in Statistics 《统计译文传记》，

which had at least 14 issues (see table 3 below). In its first year, each issue covered a

wide variety of topics and was intended for wide circulation. By 1957, each issue had

come to focus on a specialized theme, with reduced circulation numbers suggesting a

more targeted audience. In its final year, 1958, a couple of issues (numbers 10 and 11)

were also devoted to introducing materials from ‘bourgeois’ countries, most notably the

United States and the United Kingdom.236

Table 3: Collected Translations in Statistics 《统计译文专辑》

Beijing: Statistical Press

Series No. Theme Publication Print run Essays

1 General 1956 May 7100 13

2 General 1956 June 7150 9

3 General 1956 September 7140 14

4 General 1956 December 5060 8

5 ? ? ? ?

6 Agricultural Labor Productivity 1957 May 2070 15

7 Bourgeois Statistics 1957 July 1570 8

8 Accumulation and Consumption 1957 July 1570 7

9 Sample Surveying 1957 August 1460 10

10

History of the Development and Use of

Sampling Theory 1958 February 1260 4

11

The Use of Sample Surveying in Population

Research 1958 April 1470 6

12 Theory of Index Numbers 1957 December 1460 6

13 ? ? ? ?

14

Bulletin of Meeting of All Soviet Statistical

Workers237

1958 March 1480 13

235

See: Zhu Hong’en 朱鸿恩. “Du ‘sulian tongji zhuanjia tanhua jilu xuanbian’ 读‘苏联统计专家谈话记

录选编’ (Reading ‘Selected Lectures of Soviet Statistical Experts).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作 (1957. 21):

32-33.

236

Essays in Issue 10 were drawn from The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society and essays in Issue 11

were drawn from The Journal of the American Statistical Association.

237

The meeting that took place in Moscow from June 4 - 8 1957.

96

Teaching

A final method was that of direct teaching via lecture and discussion. During oral history

interviews, the statisticians Ni Jiaxun 倪加勋 and Lin Fude 林富德 recalled attending

lectures organized at People’s University and delivered by Soviet experts, in particular

Ezhov.238

Both Ni and Lin remarked that issues of translation and access made these

experiences rather episodic and of limited value: The Soviet expert would lecture via an

interpreter. Attendees were not permitted to ask any questions during the session. If the

attendees had questions, they were required to write them down and hand them to the

expert’s local liaison 接待员. The liaison would then select and translate a handful of

these and deliver them to the expert, who would then prepare responses to them. These

responses would then be delivered at the start of the following lecture.239

Such a

discontinuous learning process with no classroom interaction arguably had limited

pedagogical value for the attendees themselves. But the lectures may have had a wider

impact, since they were typed-up and circulated as reference materials for study 学习

sessions.240

Finally, from time to time, larger seminars were also organized by the SSB or

238

Based on interviews with the statisticians Lin Fude 林富德 and Ni Jiaxun 倪加勋, who were both active

in statistical work and education in the 1950s. I met Lin on 22 April 2011 in Beijing and had two meetings

with Ni, both in Beijing, on 29 March 2011 and 7 September 2011. A statistical worker during the early

1950s, Ni attended Peoples University, where he obtained a degree in 1959 (verify). He subsequently took

up a faculty position at the university. It was through him that I learned of the identity of the two

statisticians who visited India later in the year. [provide details of interview with Ni Jiaxun and Lin Fude]

239

This description is based, in particular, on Lin Fude’s recollections.

240

Krotevich’s lecture from August 1952 appears to be an instance of such a process; the cover letter to his

lecture states that “his report is very good, and can serve as reference material for cadre in agricultural and

industrial statistics during their vocational learning.” See BMA 004-011-00019: 1, 2-12. In another instance,

Semodzhefgin’s 谢木杰夫金 May 28 1956 lecture at the Xi’an Statistics School was published in

Statistical Work. See: Semodzhefgin’s 谢木杰夫金. “He qingnian tongzhi tantan tongji xuexi—sulian

tongji zhuanjia xiemujiefujin 1956 nian wu yue 28 ri zai xi’an tongji xuexiao de bagao 和青年同志谈谈统

计学习—苏联统计专家谢木杰夫金同志 1956 年 5 月 28 日在西安统计学校的报告.” Tongji gongzuo

统计工作 (1956.14): 13-15. Reproduction of lectures could include the works of more hallowed figures as

97

one of the universities. For instance, on May 12 1955, the SSB organized a seminar 讲座

in Beijing where Soviet experts and professors from People’s University delivered

lectures 讲课 to statistical cadre from all the departments within the State Council 国务

院.241

Such exercises, however, appear not to have been a frequent feature of a statistical

expert’s work.

A fourth way of drawing upon Soviet expertise also existed, though its site was

not the PRC but the Soviet Union. While it is not clear how many Chinese students

studied statistics in the Soviet Union, at least two senior Chinese statisticians visited the

Soviet Union. From December 1954 to January 1955 Xue Muqiao visited the Soviet

Union as part of a Sino-Soviet Science and Technology Cooperation delegation. During

his time in Moscow, Xue met with the director and deputy director (the recently returned

Ezhov) of the Soviet Central Statistical Bureau. He also met with members of the

Planning Commission.242

A little over a year later in July of 1956 Sun Yefang 孙冶方,

one of the SSB’s deputy directors, led a seven man team of statisticians to the Soviet

Union. They met various officials, visited various bureaus, and studied various statistical

and planning activities. Altogether the team spent over 30 days and discussed a variety of

subjects including the calculation of total output value 总产值, constant prices 不变价格,

and the reporting structure of the Soviet Union.243

well. One of Lenin’s letters to the Soviet Central Statistics Bureau was translated and circulated in June

1953, to be used as reference material in study sessions. See: BMA 123-001-00416: 50-56.

241

DSJ: 37.

242

DSJ: 34; Xue 2006: 174.

243

DSJ: 47.

98

Conclusion

Li Fuchun’s dismissal in 1951 of statistics as it had been practiced heretofore indicated a

crisis on two levels, one ontological and the other epistemological. What categories

should the world be divided into? And what forms of knowledge can be deployed to

ascertain these categories? In line with the discourse within the Soviet Union, as

summarized by Ostrovitianov in 1954, the point of departure was the premise that there

was no single universal reality for the known world; rather, different theories and

methods were applicable to these different divisions—the social and the natural—of the

world. These different theories and methods, in turn, promoted very different interests

and led to very different social and economic outcomes in society. For Chinese thinkers,

drawing upon Soviet and Marxist views, the natural and the social world were not the

same and could not be understood using the same tools. They gained these views not just

from reading Marx and Lenin, but especially through Soviet statistical experts who were

present in the PRC and through a vast array of translated material. The overall effect was

to engender an overarching theoretical approach to all knowledge that prefigured what

statistics could be. The practical impact of this theoretical distinction between the natural

and social world was to idealize and attempt to construct a vast national network of

statistical offices, from Beijing down to the county level, with the aim of capturing all

necessary data. In Part II we shall explore the implications of this ideal. For now, let us

turn to how socialist statistics gained primacy and what its contents were.

99

CHAPTER IV

No “Mean” Solution:

The Reformulation of Statistical Science

100

In February 1957, professor of statistics and one-time banker Jin Guobao 金国宝

published a self-criticism in the journal Statistical Work 统计工作.244

The focus of the

self-criticism was his successful textbook, “An Outline of Statistics” 《统计学大纲》,

the most recent revised edition of which had been published in 1950.245

An abridged

version published under the title Statistics 《统计学》in 1935 had also become popular

as a textbook in vocational schools. In his opening paragraph to the self-criticism Jin

explained that the ancients’ 古人 possessed an important principle: getting rid of

hackneyed phrases 陈言务去. By that principle alone, Jin confessed, “An Outline of

Statistics” was beyond redemption. Copied entirely from Anglo-American bourgeois

statistics, the book was full of stale words 陈言; not one sentence was the product of new

thinking or composed of original ideas. The article was thus an attempt to atone for the

failures of the book and for his failure to correct his thinking in a timely fashion.

Such strong self-criticism is not entirely surprising, especially in 1957 when

intellectuals became particular targets for thought reform.246

Nor was Jin’s the only self-

criticism written by a statistician in the mid-1950s.247

These self-criticisms were

244

Jin Guobao 金国宝. “Dui ‘Tongjixue dagang’ de ziwo pipan 对“统计学大纲”的自我批判 (Self-

Criticism on ‘An Outline of Statistics’).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作, 1957.3: 28-32.

245

Jin Guobao 金国宝. Tongjixue dagang 统计学大纲 (An Outline of Statistics). Shanghai: Commercial

Press, 1934.

246

On thought reform of intellectuals during the 1950s more generally, see: Theodore Hsi-en Chen. “The

Thought Reform of Intellectuals.” In Government of Communist China, edited by George P. Jan, 477-485.

San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1966. For a recent work that focuses on thought reform

campaigns conducted against vagrants and the lumpen proletariat, see: Aminda M. Smith. Though Reform

and China’s Dangerous Classes—Reeducation, Resistance, and the People. New York: Rowman and

Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2013.

247

At least two other self-criticisms were published in 1956 and 1957: (i) Zou Yiren 邹依仁. “Guanyu

zichanjieji tongji xueshu sixiang de ziwo pipan 关于资产阶级统计学术思想的自我批评 (Self-Criticism

Regarding Bourgeois Statistical Thought).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作 1956.8; and (ii) Wang Sili 王思立.

101

themselves part of an extended series of debates within the academy, which from 1950

onward had sought, on the one hand, to establish the new definition of statistics, and on

the other, to mark out which statistical tools were appropriate for a socialist society.248

Jin’s self-criticism, in particular, offers a useful route through which to access two related

strands of inquiry. The first of these has to do with understanding consensus formation

within the scientific community of early PRC statisticians. As shown in Part I Chapter I,

the pre-1949 world of Chinese statistics (and social science) was vibrant and

methodologically and epistemologically diverse. In that chapter I made the case for the

centrality of the Northeast Statistical Bureau in reshaping the nature and content of

statistical work, indicating that changes in the practice of statistical work preceded their

articulation within the theory and pedagogy of statistical science. Crucial to the latter

transition was disciplining a vibrant and varied community of statisticians so that they

came to accept and espouse statistics as a Marxist-Leninist social science in the years

after 1949.

The sense that practice preceded changes in pedagogy raises questions about how

we conceptualize scientific change during and after political revolution. How did

Socialist Statistics become the dominant paradigm during the 1950s? Recent work in the

sociology of science has devoted much attention to studying how practitioners arrive at

scientific consensus and closure. One the one hand, these studies stress ‘extra-scientific’

“Pipan wo zai tongjxue zhuzuo zhong de zichan jieji sixiang 批判我在统计学著作中的资产阶级思想

(Criticism of the Presence of Bourgeois Ideology in my Statistical Work).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作

1957.10.

248

Articles critical of pre-1949 statistics and its practitioners were published in journals such as Tongji

gongzuo tongxun 统计工作通许 (Statistical Work Bulletin),Tongji gongzuo 统计工作 (Statistical Work),

Xin jianshe 新建设 (New Construction), and Zhongguo gongye 中国工业(China Industry), as well as in

scientific theses written at Renmin University in Beijing. See: Zou 1956: 28.

102

factors such as culture, power and funding, politics, and personal credibility.249

Others

have focused on the “social processes within core sets of practicing scientists who

negotiate results,” demarcate knowledge claims, and construct boundaries.250

Yet others

have explored the cultures of knowledge societies, in particular the disunity of science

made visible by a focus not on “the construction of knowledge but in the construction of

the machineries of knowledge construction.”251

This machinery is further broken down

into empirical, technological, and social machinery; the argument being that it is

combination of these that makes possible the rise of "truth effects.”252

The Chinese

experience with statistics in the1950s reflects many of these forces. But none of these

studies seem to account for how drastic political change, which brought with it an over-

arching new theoretical paradigm, was negotiated—both by the people promoting the

paradigm and by those whose original positions were not in agreement with that new

paradigm. The first half of this chapter explores this question by focusing on the nearly

decade-long sequence of publications in various journals that sought to criticize Anglo-

American ‘bourgeois’ statistics and its practitioners.

If the first half of this chapter deals with the statistics community, the second

explores how this transition affected the very content of statistics and statistical education.

In broad terms, the consequences of this transition are well known: as a social science,

249

For a brief overview of this literature, see Uri Shwed and Peter Bearman. “The Temporal Structure of

Scientific Consensus Formation.” American Sociological Review 75, no. 6 (2010): 817-840.

250

Shwed and Bearman 2010: 819.

251

Karin Knorr-Certina. Epistemic Cultures—How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, London:

Harvard University Press, 1999, 3 Knorr-Certina’s work itself builds on earlier work that focused on the

work of scientists as actors; most notably the works of Bruno Latour, Peter Galison, and Lorrain Daston.

252

Knorr-Certina 1999: 11-13.

103

statistics dealt with the social world and not the natural. It was, as a result, bifurcated

from what was seen as the abstract theorizing of mathematical statistics, which was, in

turn, banished to departments of mathematics.253

But the distinctions ran deeper. To

merely reject the law of large number 大数法则 and general probability theory 几率论

was far from enough. Even fundamental concepts such as measures of central tendency

(especially the mean), indicators 指数, and time series 时间数列, would come under the

microscope, as earnest attempts were made to excise the last vestiges of any polluting

bourgeois influence. A related and critical element in this process was the production of

new textbooks aimed at both the future professional as well as the common man.

Comparing these textbooks with Jin’s An Outline of Statistics will permit us to see what

from the older textbooks was retained and what was rejected. At the same time such a

comparison also indicates the extent to which the newest global developments in

statistical science were incorporated in 1950s China.

Jin Guobao and the Road to (Self-) Criticism254

In the immediate years after 1949 most Chinese statisticians were under increasing

pressure to accord to a new overarching theoretical paradigm, described in the previous

two chapters, which stood in fundamental contradistinction to the one they were familiar

253

See: “Chouyang de shuli tongjixue 抽样的数理统计学 (Sampling and Mathematical Statistics).”

Caijing yanjiu 财经研究 1958 (03): 57.

254

Jin’s biographical details are primarily drawn from: (i) Shi Tai 施泰. “Jin Guobao 金国宝 (1893-1963).”

Tongji yu yuce 统计与预测, 1994.06: 60-61; (ii) “Zhongguo jindai tongji xue dianjiren zhiyi—jin guobao

中国近代统计学奠基人之一—金国宝 (Among the Founders of Modern Statistics in China—Jin

Guobao).” In Minguo renwu dacidian 民国人物大辞典 (Biographical Dictionary of Republican China), by

Xu Youchun 徐友春. Hebei People’s Press, 1991; and (iii) “Jin guobao 金国宝.” In Shijie tongji mingren

zhuanji 世界统计名人传记 (Biography of Famous Statisticians of the World), by Gong Jianyao 龚鉴尧,

402-407. Beijing: Statistical Press, 2000.

104

with. In order to attempt an answer to the question of how this happened, it is important

to first disaggregate the community of statisticians.

During oral history interviews with the statistician Lin Fude 林富德 (1925-) and

the demographer Wu Cangping 鄔滄萍 (1922-), both provided contrasting views on how

they adapted to the new statistics of the 1950s. Both had come of age and been trained in

the 1940s, and as such, prior to 1949 had a relatively catholic approach to statistics. In the

years that followed, Lin informed me, he and other statisticians had to recalibrate their

ideas of statistics and bring them into closer alignment with the new definitions. Wu, on

the other hand, while accepting that such recalibration took place, observed that the

change was often only rhetorical or symbolic; the actual statistical ideas were the same.

Both pointed out that the tangible result was that methodology and statistical work were

privileged over research and theory and application stood estranged from each other.255

While Lin and Wu may have successfully negotiated the transition, as the

youngest generation of statisticians trained before 1949 they were hardly in positions of

influence; that is, positions from where they could have an immediate and widespread

impact on the state of the discipline and on the education and training of future

statisticians and statistical cadres. That space was occupied by an older generation of

statisticians who had been active over the preceding decades; especially the 1930s, when

the social survey movement was at its peak. This generation had published textbooks that

were in widespread use. Its members had served in government, in education, in banking,

and also as researchers in a private capacity. In particular, it was in their role as authors

of important and popular textbooks that curtailing their activities and reformulating their

255

I interviewed Lin and Wu in Beijing; Wu on 11 March 2011 and Lin on 22 April 2011.

105

views became crucial to the disciplinary reformulation of statistics. Prominent among that

generation was Jin Guobao.

Today, Jin Guobao is widely regarded as one of the founders 奠基人 of modern

statistics in China.256

Such recognition is based to a large extent on his activities prior to

1949. A professor of statistics and one-time banker and senior government official, in the

decades before the CCPs’ victory he had become arguably China’s most famous

statistician as well as its most prominent teacher of statistics. His text, An Outline of

Statistics 《统计学大纲》, went through multiple editions and as the standard textbook

for college level statistics it had become “the most influential statistics textbook in the

country during that time.”257

It was precisely this perceived influence that made him one

of the targets of concerted criticism in the early PRC.

Jin Guobao was born Oct. 12 1893 in Tongli Town in Wujiang county, Jiangsu

province 江苏省吴江市同里镇. His early education was at Shanghai’s Fudan Gongxue

复旦公学. After graduating from school, he served as an English teacher at the Wujiang

Middle School. During this time he frequently contributed essays to the journals New

Bulletin of Current Affairs 《时事新报》and Eastern Miscellany 《东方杂志》. Using

the nom de plume Jin Lüqin 金侣琴 he was the first person to translate Lenin into the

Chinese language, publishing Lenin’s “Bolshevik's Statement of Demands” 鲍尔雪维克

256

See, for instance, the entry for Jin in Xu 1991.

257

See: “Jin Guobao 金国宝 (1893-1963). Tongji yu yuce 统计与预测 1994.06: 61. By 1948, the book

was in its ninth edition. I haven’t so far been able to locate actual publication details for the 1950s, but a

13th

‘revised’ edition was published in 1961, which suggests three possible editions during the 1950s. The

book appears to have been re-published in 1992, this time by the Shanghai Press 上海书店.

106

之所要求与排斥 in the first issue (September 1919) of the journal Liberation and

Reform 《解放与改造》.258

A few years later in 1921 he traveled to America and studied statistics at

Columbia University on a scholarship from the South Seas Tobacco Company南洋烟草

公司. Jin received a Master’s degree in 1923, upon which he returned to China and

successively taught statistics at such institutions as the Shanghai Chinese Public School

上海中国公学, Fudan University, and the University of Commerce 商科大学. During

this time, he was also a Section Chief in the Ministry of Finance. In 1928, on the orders

of the President of the newly founded Academia Sinica 大学院, Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培

(1868-1940), he traveled to various countries in Europe and the Americas to study their

statistical activities. During well over a year of travel he gathered a variety of statistical

materials.

Upon his return to China, he became directly involved in government, banking,

and statistical education. In May 1929 he was appointed the Director of the Nanjing

Finance Bureau and served as a special member of the Capital Construction Committee.

The following year, he was among the people who joined D.K. Lieu in setting up a

Statistical Society, which was conceived as a forum for the promotion of private

academic discussions. In April of 1930 he traveled abroad again, this time to Japan, to

study local finance and to attend the International Statistical Institute’s nineteenth

Biennial Conference in Tokyo.259

Upon returning from Japan in July of that year, he

moved to Shanghai and reentered the world of finance. Over the next several years he

258

This journal apparently only existed till 1922; Liang Qichao was its onetime editor.

259

Other attendees included D.K. Lieu and Zhu Junyi.

107

held various managerial, auditing, accounting, and research positions at the

Communications Bank 交通银行 and at the Central Bank 中央银行.260

He would

eventually rise to senior positions such as Director of Accounting and Chairman of the

Board at several of these institutions. After 1937, Jin also held professorial appointments

at Shanghai University of Commerce and at Jinan University.

Of Jin’s various professional identities, the one that would persist into the 1950s

following the Communist takeover was that of respected professor and prolific author.

Early in the decade he was appointed a professor at Fudan University, where he also

served as the director of special training courses in statistics and trade. During these years

he also concurrently held professorships at the Shanghai Institute of Finance and

Economics 上海财政学院 and at the Institute of Economics of the Shanghai Academy of

Social Sciences. Jin was a prolific author and had already produced several monographs

and textbooks for the study of statistics and economics prior to 1949. In addition to the

aforementioned An Outline of Statistics 《统计学大纲》, he had published tracts on

subjects such as England’s tax structure, currency reform, index numbers, industrial and

economic problems, and Keynesian economics. He continued writing after 1949, and

authored at least four books on statistics, including an abridged version of the Outline of

Statistics, titled Statistics 《统计学》.261

He was 69 years old when he passed away in

Shanghai on 15 February 1963.

260

See Jin’s entry in Xu 1991.

261

The other three were: (i) Gaoji tongjixue 高級統計學 (Advanced Statistics). Shanghai: Lixin kuaiji

tushu yongpinshu, 1951; (ii) Gongye tongjixue yuanli 工业统计学原理 (Principles of Industrial Statistics).

Shanghai: Lixin kuaiji tushu yongpinshu, 1952. (Republished in 1953); and (iii) Shehui zhuyi zhidu xia de

guomin shouru yanjiu 社会主义制度下的国民收入研究 (Analysis of National Income under the Socialist

System). Shanghai: Shanghai Finance Institute, 1956.

108

It was Jin’s An Outline of Statistics, which, because of its content and continuing

and widespread use after 1949, became one of the early targets of criticism during the

1950s. An Outline of Statistics was published in 1935 by two different presses: firstly as

part of a series by the National School of Commerce Press 国立商学院出版社, and

secondly by the Commercial Press. By 1950, it had gone through 13 editions.262

Jin’s

views on statistics and its links to mathematics, however, were in evidence as early as

1925. In the introduction to the New Discussion/Theory of Statistics 《统计新论》, his

first textbook on statistics, published in 1925 shortly after he returned from attending

Columbia University, he wrote:

“The study of statistics is subtle and broad. If one is without mathematical

awareness and a scientific mind, he cannot speak about it. And yet, it is

used frequently and very widely; there is no one who doesn’t use it.

Indeed, scholars who care not to learn it are immediately struck by

dizziness when they come across its charts and tables; and the less said

about [their reaction to] advanced mathematical principles and refined and

meticulous analysis, the better.”263

Ten years later, the first sentence in Jin’s An Outline of Statistics was more direct:

Statistics is the study of using counting or estimation to represent the

dynamic-ness and static-ness of social or natural phenomena and to carry

out the analysis of the relationship between numbers.264

[emphasis added]

In thinking about statistics as fundamentally mathematical in nature and universally

applicable to the social and natural worlds, his views were very much a reflection of the

prevailing wisdom of the time. Like Jin, the significant number of Chinese statisticians

262

See: Song Tao 宋涛 ed. 20 shiji zhongguo xueshu dadian: jingjixue—xiace 20 世纪中国学术大点：经

济学—下册 (Major Themes in Twentieth Century Chinese Academics: Economics—Volume 2). Fujian

Education Press 福建教育出版社, 2005, 785.

263

Quoted in: Shi Ta 1994: 60.

264

Jin Guobao 1934: 1.

109

(and economists and social scientists) active in the 1930s had been trained in the United

States or Western Europe or were students of those that had been trained there.265

They

had served in government and were in many instances active participants in what Tong

Lam has called the Social Survey Movement of the 1930s.266

At this time, a well-defined

socialist critique of statistics had yet to be articulated in China or elsewhere. The espousal

of statistics as a universal science by Jin and his contemporaries, many of whom were

authors of prominent textbooks as well, had no coherent counter-discourse. This view

was reflected in several textbooks they published shortly after 1949, all of which enjoyed

widespread popularity: the Jilin based professor of statistics Wang Sili 王思立 published

The General Theory of Statistics 《统计学通论》in 1951; Zhang Zhihong 张志鸿

published Agricultural Statistics 《农业统计学》in 1953, and Zou Yiren 邹依仁

published Industrial Statistics 《工业统计》in 1952.267

By publishing books that

promoted what was to quickly become a theoretically unsound understanding of statistics

after 1949, these authors drew the immediate and targeted attention of New China’s new

265

For the role of Anglo-American training and the larger influence of the Anglo-American Academy in

shaping disciplines such as Demography, Economics, and Sociology in Republican China, see: Tong Lam

2012; Paul B. Trescott 2007. Jingji Xue—The History of the Introduction of Western Economic Ideas into

China, 1850-1950. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press; and Yung-Chen Chiang 2001. Social

Engineering and the Social Sciences in China, 1919-1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

According to Trescott, the Columbia Economics Department, which produced the largest number of

Chinese graduates in the social sciences during the first half of the 20th

century, was particularly

distinguished for its heavy emphasis on statistics. Trescott 2007: 69. For a discussion of Marxist social

science during this period see Chiang 2001, Chapter 3 and 4: “Genesis of a Marxist Social Science

Enterprise in the Early 1930s,” pp. 136-183. For an alternate view that considers developments in economic

thought during the Republican years through the rubric of the totalizing governmentalizing logic of

capitalism, see: Malcolm Thompson. “The Birth of Chinese Population: A Study in the History of

Governmental Logics.”University of British Columbia, PhD Dissertation, 2013.

266

Lam 2012.

267

Song, Xuguang 宋旭光. “Xin zhongguo jingji tongji fazhan de lishi kaocha 新中国经济统计发展的历

史考察 (Historical Investigation of the development of Economic Statistics in New China).” Caijing wenti

yanjiu 财经问题研究 (Research on Issues in Finance and Economics), no. 3 (2013): 21-26.

110

socialist statisticians. As one of these socialist statisticians would go on to explain, the

hazards such books posed were indeed quite grave:

… [They] will not only impede the progress of statistical science, but will

also cause ideological confusion among statistical workers, which will

lead statistical work to suffer losses; they therefore [eventually] hinder the

development of the enterprise of socialist construction. 268

And so, in very short order after 1949, Jin Guobao, many of his fellow statisticians, and

the textbooks they had composed, all came to represent the most obdurate of foes to those

seeking to enforce a new understanding of statistics.

Patterns of Critique and Self-Critique

Obdurate foes Jin and his fellow statisticians may well have been, but they were also the

type of higher intellectual who the CCP prized tremendously. For the CCP, their value

lay in possessing skills and knowledge that were sorely needed. But such groups were

also the least susceptible to dogma. As Harriet C. Mills noted in a 1959 article,

Communist policy toward this strategic group [of higher intellectuals] in

the past decade has consistently aimed at securing most effective

utilization of its knowledge. Zigzagging steadily toward this goal, the

Communists have now attacked, now united, now criticized. Meanwhile,

they are recruiting their own Red intellectuals, but have not yet had time to

train a new group of Red and expert.”269

This then was the challenge: to not wholly discredit the statisticians but to reform them so

that they could continue to contribute from within the system and be held up as

268

Gui Shizuo 桂世祚. “Ping Zou Yiren, Jin Guobao liangwei xiansheng de gongye tongjixue zhuzuo 评邹

依仁、金国宝两位先生的工业统计学著作 (Criticisms of Zou Yiren and Jin Guobao’s Works on

Industrial Statistics).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作 1956: 24

269

Harriet C. Mills. “Thought Reform: Ideological Remolding in China.” In Government of Communist

China, edited by George P. Jan, 486-498, 495-96 San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1966.

111

exemplars of the potential of remolding.270

A lack of adequate numbers of Red experts in

statistics remained a challenge through the decade, meaning that this older generation of

statisticians never lost its value.

The criticisms of the 1950s can also be understood as a younger generation’s

attempts to supplant an older generation. The people responsible for ‘zigzagging’ toward

the goal of effectively utilizing statisticians belonged, for the most part, to a middle

generation, between the Jin Guobaos on the one side, and the Lin Fudes and Wu

Canpings on the other. While it is unclear if either Lin or Wu directly participated in the

criticisms (Lin co-authored a textbook in the mid-1950s along socialist lines), many of

their colleagues did, and they all shared certain general characteristics. Most were born in

the 1910s or 1920s, had been trained in economics or statistics (sometimes abroad), and

by the late 1930s had thrown in their lot with the CCP. Many of them had received

further training in Yan’an and at party schools elsewhere and, as such, were particularly

receptive toward socialist statistics as it became increasingly clearly articulated by the

late 1930s. As they took on administrative and pedagogical positions at key institutions

following 1949—in some cases they had already been involved in administering CCP

controlled areas prior to that—they turned their enthusiasm towards propagation. Notable

among these institutions were the Northeast Statistics Bureau (e.g. Yang Jianbai 杨坚白,

Wang Sihua 王思华, Wang Jianzhen 王建真, others?), the State Statistics Bureau (Xue

270

On thinking about the Chinese revolution as a redistribution of skills and knowledge, see: Jacob Eyferth.

Eating Rice from Bamboo Roots—The Social History of a Community of Handicraft Papermakers in Rural

Sichuan, 1920–2000. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008.

112

Muqiao 薛暮桥, Wang Sihua 王思华, Wang Jianzhen 王建真), People’s University (Lin

Fude 林富德), and Beijing University (Hu Daiguang 胡代光).271

Newly established journals of the PRC offered the principal channels through

which this younger generation attacked and cajoled Jin Guobao and his colleagues. Of

particular prominence were journals that focused specifically on statistics, most notably

the Northeast Statistics Bureau’s Statistical Work 《统计工作》 (1949-1954) and the

State Statistics Bureau’s Statistical Work Bulletin 《统计工作通讯》 (1953-1959, 1979-

).272

Other venues where statistics was debated included the journals New Construction

《新建设》, the Journal of Finance and Economics 《财经研究》 (1956-1960, 1980- ).

By the middle of the decade student theses written at Renmin University had also begun

to tackle the subject of socialist and bourgeois statistics.273

The pattern of these criticisms and self-criticisms did not therefore follow the

larger patterns of national thought reform campaigns, in which newspapers were a key

element. Harriet Mills described such national campaigns by noting that they generally

began “with a series of articles and editorials in newspapers.”

Since newspaper reading is a political obligation in China and items of the

day are often taken up in study groups, a subject which has received more

than usual attention will begin to be discussed. Thus, a demand is created

for further study, for which materials and instructions are soon

271

The senior statistical leadership, people like Xue Muqiao, Li Fuchun, Sun Yuefang, Wang Sihua, etc.,

did not themselves participate in the criticism, though they must have sanctioned them. For example, Li

Fuchun clarified the PRC’s new statistics in his 1951 speech, distinguishing it from ‘Anglo-American’ and

‘bourgeois’ statistics. See Part I Chapter I for Li’s actual words.

272

The SSB’s Tongji gongzuo 《统计工作》(Statistical Work) was a monthly from 1953 to 1955; became

a fortnightly 1956 onward, and ceased publication after 15 issues in 1959. It was revived in the late 1970s,

and these days has the name Zhongguo tongji 《中国统计》(China Statistics).

273

Zou 1956: 28.

113

forthcoming. The campaign, which may last several months, is

launched.”274

As noted, most criticisms of bourgeois statistics, however, were published not in

newspapers but in specialized journals, which were not available to the general public.

The readership and target audience for study sessions, therefore, was more narrowly

conceived: the statistical cadre, student, and teacher. In addition, unlike nation-wide

campaigns such as the three-antis and the five-antis or the anti-rightist campaign that

usually had a clear start and end date, the critique of statistics persisted through the

decade, gathering steam along the way.275

The interlocutors in these debates no doubt

took some of their cues from national developments, but they were also subject to the

internal and international dynamics of the world of statistics.

Based on these general observations, we can divide the years from 1949 to 1958

into four periods (See Table 1 below). 276

The relative paucity of critical articles during

the first phase, lasting from 1949 to 1951, suggests that attention was devoted primarily

to establishing a basis for statistical work in the PRC. Once this foundation was in place

in the Northeast, a sustained analysis of existing statistical theory and pedagogy could be

undertaken. Indeed, through the end of 1951, criticisms of ‘Anglo-American’ or

274

Mills 1966: 492.

275

On the slippage between the normative start and end dates of campaigns and policies and their actual

practice/implementation, see: Neil J. Diamant “Policy Blending, Fuzzy Chronology, and Local

Understandings of National Initiatives in Early 1950s China.” Frontiers of History in China 9, no. 1 (2014):

83-101.

276

The periodization here is reconstructed from the following materials: (1) Liu and Zhang 2000: 119-127;

(2) Various articles from State Statistics Bureau’s Tongji gongzuo tongxun 《统计工作通讯》and Tongji

gongzuo 《统计工作》; (3) Compilations of the Northeast Statistics Bureau’s serial anthologies of

materials culled from the monthly journal Tongji gongzuo 《统计工作》from 1950-1953 (The NESB’s

journal was discontinued by the middle of 1954); and (4) various other journals, such as Xin jianshe 《新

建设》, Jingji zhoubao 《经济周报》, Caijing yanjiu 《财经研究》, etc. It should be pointed out that

this is not a comprehensive listing of all publications attacking ‘bourgeois statistics;’ it does, however,

reflect some of the general trends of the decade.

114

‘bourgeois’ statistics were rather limited. On a national level, the first book to be

criticized was Gou Shisheng’s 勾适生 Principles of Statistics《统计学原理》. Essays

critical of Gou were published in 1950 by He Sheng 荷生 and in 1951 by Tie Hua 铁华

and Liu Xin 刘新.277

These initial criticisms appear not have been very detailed. On a

more regional level, some criticisms were published in the Northeast Statistical Bureau’s

Statistical Work《统计工作》 starting in 1951, especially following the start of the

three-antis campaigns late in that year.278

Table1. Frequency of Articles Criticizing "Bourgeois" Statistics, 1949-1958 (including self-criticisms)

1949-1951 1952-1954 1955-1957 1958

Number of Articles 2 6 10 1

Developments in late 1951 and during 1952 provided a clearer focus for the

critique, which expanded both its targets and its frequency. The first of these

developments was the publication of new editions of textbooks by Jin Guobao, Zou Yiren,

and other statisticians. If these new editions offered a significant challenge to the rise of

socialist statistics, then the preparations for and establishment of the State Statistics

Bureau (1952) and selection of People’s University as the main training site for the

(social science) of statistics (1952) provided the twin loci through which this challenge

was met. Both these developments, as well as the nation-wide reorganization of

educational institutions 院系调整, encouraged a more sustained analysis of the state of

277

He Sheng 荷生. “Ping “tongjixue yuanli--diyijuan” 评《统计学原理》(第一卷) (Review of Principles

of Statistics (Volume I)”).” Jingji zhoubao 经济周报 (Economic Weekly) 12, no. 3 (1950); Tie Hua 铁华

and Liu Xin 刘新. “Lun tongjixue de duixiang ji qi kexue jichu—ping Gou Shisheng zhu <tongjixue yuanli>

论统计学的对象及其科学基础—评勾适生著<统计学原理> (Discussion of the Object and Theoretical

Basis of Statistics—A Review of Gou Shisheng’s Principles of Statistical).” Xin jianshe 《新建设》 (New

Construction) 4, no. 5 (1951).

278

In particular, a series of articles by Wang Jianzhen 王建真, reprinted in the compilations of the NESB’s

Tongji gongzuo 《统计工作》 in 1952.01, 1952.10, and 1953.01.

115

textbooks and academic discourse. Not surprisingly, therefore, 1952 witnessed a larger

number of articles published on the subject, including those by Yang Jianbai and Wang

Jianzhen in the Northeast Statistics Bureau’s Statistical Work《统计工作》.279

That

same year Guo Gengji 过庚吉 published an essay criticizing Jin Guobao’s 金国宝

Principles of Industrial Statistics 《工业统计学原理》 and Zou Yiren’s 邹依仁

Industrial Statistics 《工业统计》.280

In his essay, Guo claimed that in spite of claiming

to have changed their texts to reflect Soviet statistical theory, these authors were guilty of

still effectively following Anglo-American statistical theory. Additional essays on the

hypocrisy of capitalist index numbers and the dangers of bourgeois statistical thought

were also published during 1952.281

In early 1953, Xu Qian 徐前 and Liu Xin 刘新 published what was up to that

point the most sustained and detailed criticism and analysis of the state of statistical

theory in the PRC. Their essay, entitled “Criticism Regarding Bourgeois Statistical

Theory,” appeared in the first and second number of that year’s New Construction 《新

建设》, and expanded on the earlier critiques of several statisticians, including Gou

279

For Yang Jianbai’s 杨坚白 essays, see for instance the Tongji gongzuo 《统计工作》1952.01, 1952.2,

1952.3 and 4.

280

Guo Gengji 过庚吉. “Fandui sanbu zichan jieji tongji sixiang dusu—ping jinguobao zhu <gongye

tongjixue yuanli> he zou yi ren zhu <gongye tongji> 反对散布资产阶级统计思想毒素——评金国宝著

《工业统计学原理》和邹依仁著《工业统计》(Combat the Spread of the Toxin that is Bourgeois

Statistical Thought—A Review of Jin Guobao’s Principles of Industrial Statistics and Zou Yiren’s

Industrial Statistics).” 1952.

281

Fang Bingzhu 方秉铸 published (1952.10): “Cong zhishu shang kan zichan jieji tongji sixiang de xuwei

benzhi 从指数上看资产阶级统计思想的虚伪本质 (A Look at the Hypocrisy of Bourgeois Statistics from

the Perspective of Index Numbers)”; and Feng Jiqing冯杞靖 published (1952.10): “Xijing tongji sixiang

zhong de zichan jieji yidu 洗净统计思想中的资产阶级遗毒 (Wash Clean the Bourgeois Legacy from

Statistical Thought)”.

116

Shisheng, Jin Guobao, and Zou Yiren. Liu and Xu offered specific examples to

demonstrate the problems with bourgeois statistics (discussed in the following section).282

While one would have expected the article to have served as a clarion call for additional

critiques, 1954 was an oddly quiet year. One possible reason was the focus on the first

five-year plan (1953-1957).

The third period, from 1955 to 1957, is marked by not just a quantitative jump in

the number of articles, but also by a qualitative shift in their content. Three features, in

particular, characterize this period: the impact of the 1954 Soviet Resolution, the

emergence of self-criticisms, and the role of the Shanghai Finance and Economics

Institute. Let us consider the 1954 resolution first. The meeting in Moscow in Spring

1954, which had categorically adjudicated in favor of statistics’ definition as a social

science, had a signal influence on the wider PRC statistical community. News of the

resolution and the now Soviet state-sanctioned definition of statistics, however, took

some time to filter through; a complete Chinese translation of the deliberations was not

published until early 1955.283

But its impact was evident in the more confident tone and

tenor of the critiques that started emerging in 1955.284

Close on the heels of the Soviet

resolution’s publication, Xu Qian 徐前 and Liu Xin 刘新 published an updated version of

their 1953 article. It retained its earlier title, but this time was published in the SSB’s

282

Xu Qian 徐前 and Liu Xin 刘新. “Guanyu zichan jieji tongji lilun de pipan 关于资产阶级统计理论的

批判 (Criticisms of Bourgeois Statistical Theory).” Xin jianshe 《新建设》, no. 1 and 2 (1953). The

authors noted that the article was drafted by them in December 1952.

283

See: “Sulian tongji kexue huiyi jueyi 苏联统计学科学会议决议 (Resolution of the Soviet Meeting on

Statistical Science).” Tongji gongzuo tongxun 《统计工作通讯》(1955.02): 1-4, 45

284

This is an impression based on the interviews I conducted with, among others, the Renmin University

professor of statistics Yuan Wei 袁卫.

117

journal Statistical Work 《统计工作》. A brief editorial comment noted that it had been

updated based on the conclusions arrived at during the 1954 Moscow Conference.285

In

the ensuing months, additional essays were published by Hu Daiguang 胡代光 and Wang

Jianzhen 王健真; the former demanding the eradication of the pernicious influence of

bourgeois statistics and the latter offering an analysis of the failings of bourgeois theories

of index numbers.286

1956 was a particularly fruitful year for criticisms. Early in the year, Li Zhenzhou

李振周 published an essay criticizing agricultural statistics for their rightist conservative

thought and demanded that such problems be overcome.287

Li was followed by Wang

Feixian 王飞宪 who critiqued the capitalist thought present in educational materials

published at the start of the 50s and by Shi Qing 石青 who focused his attention on the

285

Xu Qian 徐前 and Liu Xin 刘新. “Guanyu zichan jieji tongji lilun de pipan 关于资产阶级统计理论的

批判 (Criticisms of Bourgeois Statistical Theory).” Tongji gongzuo tongxun 统计工作通讯 (Statistical

Work Bulletin), (1955.08).

286

Hu Daiguang 胡代光. “Ganqing zichan jieji tongji sixiang de liudu 肃清资产阶级统计思想的流毒

(Eliminate the Pernicious Influence of Bourgeois Statistical Ideology).” Tongji gongzuo 《统计工作》

(1955.10); and Wang Jianzhen 王健真. “Dui zichan jieji zhishu ‘lilun’ de pipan 对资产阶级指数‘理论’的

批判 (Criticisms of the Bourgeois Theory of Index Numbers).” Tongji gongzuo 《统计工作》(1955.11).

287

Li Zhenzhou 李振周. “Chedi pipan yu kefu women nongye tongji gongzuo zhong de youqing baoshou

sixiang 彻底批判与客服我们农业统计工作中的右倾保守思想 (Thoroughly Critique and Overcome

Rightist Conservative Ideas in our Agricultural Statistics Work).” Tongji gongzuo 《统计工作》(1956.4).

118

statistics of infrastructure.288

Zhang Zhihong 张志鸿 and his Agricultural Statistics were

critiqued by Zhang Minru 张敏如.289

1956 is also significant for witnessing the first self-criticism by a statistician.

Early in the year, Zou Yiren, who had been one of the subjects of targeted criticisms

earlier in the decade, published a self-criticism.290

Gui Shizuo 桂世祚 responded at the

end of the year with an essay in which he approved of and welcomed Zou’s contrition,

but felt that in many instances the self-criticism did not go far enough. For good measure,

in the same piece he also returned to Jin Guobao’s Principles of Industrial Statistics and

offered additional criticisms.291

Perhaps in response to the increased stridency during the

previous year, 1957 witnessed additional self-criticisms. Jin Guobao published a self-

criticism early in 1957. As noted in the introduction above, he did not discuss his book on

industrial statistics or any other works, and focused instead on his most successful

textbook, Outline of Statistics 《统计学大纲》Tongjixue dagang.292

A third self-

288

Wang Feixian 王飞宪 . “Guanyu jiben tongjixue yuanli jiaocai de yixie yijian 关于几本统计学原理教

材的一些意见 (A Few Recommendations for Textbooks of Basic Statistics).” Tongji gongzuo 《统计工作》

(1956.16); and Shi Qing 石青. “Pipan jiben jianshe tongji gongzuo zhong tuoli shiji de xianxiang 批判基本

建设统计工作中脱离实际的现 (Criticisms Regarding Divorcing from Reality the Statistical Work in

Capital Construction).” Tongji gongzuo 《统计工作》(1956.19).

289

Zhang Minru 张敏如.“ Dui ‘nongye tongjixue’ yishu de jidian yijian 对‘农业统计学’一书的几点意见

(Some Suggestions Concerning the Book “Agricultural Statistics”).” Tongji gongzuo《统计工作》

(1956.12).

290

Zou 1956.8 remains the first self-criticism that I can locate. Zou (1908-1994) was a Paris University

trained mathematician and statistician who had taught at Fudan, Chongqing, and the Shanghai Business

University. In 1952, he was transferred to the Shanghai Finance and Economics Institute. In addition he

also held appointments at the Shanghai Academy of Social Science and Jiaotong University. For more on

Zou, see: Shi Tai 施泰. “Zou Yiren 邹依仁.” Tongji yu yuce 《统计与预测》, no. 6, (2001): 52-53.

291

Gui Shizuo 桂世祚. “Ping Zou Yiren, Jin Guobao liangwei xiansheng de gongye tongjixue zhuzuo评邹

依仁、金国宝两位先生的工业统计学著作 (Criticisms of Zou Yiren and Jin Guobao’s Works on

Industrial Statistics).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作, (1956: 24-27).

292

Jin Guobao 1957.

119

criticism was published a few months later by Wang Sili 王思立, the author of books

such as A General Theory of Statistics 《统计学通论》.293

Late in the year, Zou Yiren

also published a short history of the evolution of statistics, and in line with his own self-

criticism from the previous year, described how statistics was, after all, a social

science.294

These self-criticisms followed a common pattern. Each author began by observing

that he had been trained within the Anglo-American system, in some cases had spent time

abroad, and was completely in thrall to bourgeois vices like formalism 形式主义 and

idealism 唯心主义. After 1949, even though he may have paid lip service to the slogan

of learning from the Soviet Union, he still regarded Marxist-Leninist statistical theory as

being too simplistic. Only after extended study of Marxist-Leninist thought over the

following five to six years had he come to realize statistics’ true object (the social world)

and theoretical basis (Dialectical Materialism 辩证唯物主义).295

The process can be

summed-up via the following three-point schema:296

1. He now understood that statistics was a social science that researched large-

scale social phenomena. It was different from all the natural sciences.

2. Statistics studied the quantitative aspects of these large-scale social

phenomena. Therefore, it was also different from all other social sciences

293

Wang Sili 王思立. “Pipan wo zai tongjixue zhuzuo zhong de zichan jieji sixiang 批判我在统计学著作

中的资产阶级思想 (Criticism of Bourgeois Ideology in my Statistical Works). ” Tongji gongzuo《统计工

作》(1957.10).

294

Zou Yiren 邹依仁. “Lun tongji shi yimen shehui kexue 论统计是一门社会科学 (Discussion of

Statistics as a Social Science).” Caijing yanjiu 《财经研究》(1957.04).

295

Jin Guobao 1957: 28.

296

Wang Sili 1957: 27.

120

3. Finally, statistics took into account the qualitative aspects of numerous social

phenomena in order to study their quantitative aspects; i.e. it took into account

the interconnectedness of society. In so doing it was again different from

bourgeois statistics.

A final feature that distinguishes the 1955-57 years is the role that the Shanghai

Institute for Finance and Economics 上海财政经济学院 (SIFE) came to play, both as a

site to which several recalcitrant ‘bourgeois’ statisticians had been relocated, as well as

the venue where those same statisticians could perform their contrition and restitution via

structured discussion and criticism sessions. The SIFE’s origin can be traced to Nanjing’s

Higher Normal School 南京高等师范学校, which had been established in 1917.

Departments dealing with commerce and business 商科 had migrated to Shanghai in

1921 and by 1932 they had become the National Shanghai School of Business 国立上海

商学院. In August of 1950 its name was changed to the Shanghai Institute of Finance and

Economics. Over the following three years the business and finance departments of 20

schools in eastern China were merged into it.297

As a result, by the mid-1950s, it was

home to many of the major pre-1949 figures from the world of statistics, some of whom

we have already encountered in this chapter and in earlier chapters: Zhu Junyi (the last

Director of Statistics under the Guomindang), Jin Guobao, and Zou Yiren, among many

others.

By the mid-1950s, many of the statisticians at SIFE began organizing informal

discussions and meetings that focused on the varying foibles of bourgeois statistics. One

such meeting was organized in 1956 and engaged in criticism of bourgeois index

297

http://www.shufe.edu.cn/structure/shangcaigk/shangcaijj.htm, and

http://www.shufe.edu.cn/structure/shangcaigk/lishiyg.htm; accessed May 05 2014.

121

numbers. Organized by the Statistics department of the SIFE, the meeting and its

outcome were originally described in a report published in the first issue of The Journal

of Finance and Economics 《财经研究》 during the second half of the year.298

It

included the views of statisticians such as Zou Yiren (the journal’s first editor and whose

self-criticism had just been published), Zhu Junyi, and Jin Guobao. The report was

reprinted in abridged form later in the year in the SSB’s Statistical Work 《统计工

作》.299

The group at SIFE stayed active into 1958, when, motivated by the tumult of the

Anti-Rightist movement, they published another lengthy report on an informal meeting

where the subject was the status and use of mathematical statistics within a socialist

society. Among the many involved in this discussion were, what should by now appear to

us, the usual suspects: Wang Sili, Jin Guobao, and Zou Yiren.300

The different periods through which we have viewed the growing intensity and

changing nature of criticisms permit some generalization. What is evident is that even

with a top-down dominant paradigm, consensus formation was a process that had to be

negotiated. For its target audience—the statistical cadre and students—this negotiation

took place through the pages of various statistics and economics journals, thereby

producing the veneer of a community of scientists in pursuit of “true knowledge,” and

298

See: “Zichan jieji tongji zhishu lilun pipan 资产阶级统计指数理论批判 (Criticism of the Bourgeois

Theory of Index Numbers).” Caijing yanjiu 《财经研究》(1956.01): 13-19.

299

See: “Pipan zichan jieji tongji zhishu de fan kexuexing he fandong benzhi 批判资产阶级统计指数的反

科学性和反动本质 (Critique of the Reactionary and Anti-Scientific Nature of Bourgeois Statistical

Indicators).” Tongji gongzuo 《统计工作》(1956.17).

300

See:: “Guanyu shuli tongji zai shehui jingji tongji kexue zhong de diwei yu zuoyong wenti de taolun 关

于数理统计在社会经济统计科学中的地位与作用问题的讨论 (Discussion Regarding the Status and Use

of Mathematical Statistics in Statistical Work in a Socialist Economy).” Caijing yanjiu 《财经研究》(1958.03).

122

arriving at a consensus about it through debate and discussion—that is, approximating the

idealized workings of a general scientific community. The testing of boundaries was in

clearer evidence during the early 1950s, when none of those being criticized had felt it

necessary to respond in print. As the space for alternate views shrunk to near

nonexistence after 1955, staying above the fracas was no longer an option. As more

textbooks in the new paradigm were published, especially by the SSB and by Peoples

University Press, and as more people were trained in socialist statistics, self-criticism

offered the only route to salvaging one’s reputation and position. While it is impossible

for us to parse an individual’s stated acceptance of the new paradigm from his true views,

the whole exercise very quickly became as much about performance as it was about

belief. In this way, by 1956 the burden of performing criticism had shifted from New

China’s socialist statisticians to those they sought to reform—the likes of Jin Guobao,

Wang Sili, and Zou Yiren.

Before we proceed to a discussion of how these processes affected the actual

content of statistics, it is worth asking if any obvious candidates for criticism were

successful at evading it. Perhaps the most famous such case is that of Chen Da 陈达

(1892-1975), the famous demographer and sociologist. Chen’s career can be neatly

divided into two parts. Chen received his doctorate from Columbia in Sociology in 1923

and from that year until 1951 he taught at Qinghua University 清华大学 in Beijing and at

South West Associated Universities 西南联合大学. During that time, he led several

sociological studies, authored numerous books and articles on labor, migration and

population, and held a number of important administrative positions. He was also a vocal

advocate of improved demographic data, in particular the establishment of a national

123

census.301

From 1938 to 1948 he directed the Institute of Census Research and developed

a census program and carried out surveys in and around the southwestern city of

Kunming 昆明. After 1949, Chen’s activities become virtually untraceable and stand in

stark isolation compared to his activities up to that point.302

And yet, as a practitioner

who used statistical methods but did not write textbooks or seek to teach statistics he

remained uninteresting to the exponents of socialist statistics.303

Thus, even though Chen

was targeted during the anti-rightist campaign of 1958, he escaped the attention of

socialist statisticians.

The Content of Critique

Unlike the nature and timing of the self-criticisms, which leaves open the interpretation

that they may have been, in the end, about performance and survival, the impact of the

imposition of socialist statistics on the content of statistical science is more readily

discernable. At the general level, criticisms of bourgeois statistics were repetitions of

arguments already encountered in the previous chapter. Bourgeois statistics conflated the

natural and social world as a common unit of analysis.304

It lacked comprehensiveness

301

See for example: Chen, Da. Population in Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946.

302

In 1951, he lost his position at Tsinghua as sociology was scrapped as a discipline. In 1957, he

participated in a conference on population research in Beijing; his paper was the principal paper at the

conference and was titled “New China’s Population Census of 1953 and its Relation to National

Reconstruction and Demographic Research.” So far, I have been unable to track this paper down. For a

mention of the paper, see: Howard L. Boorman & Richard C. Howard, eds. Biographical dictionary of

Republican China, 2 Vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967, 238.

303

See for instance: Gong Jinyao 2000: 377-381. Gong’s biographical essay devotes only one paragraph to

Chen’s post-1949 activities, noting that he delivered one paper in 1957 using data from the 1953 national

census. The same skewed pattern can be observed in Boorman & Howard 1967: 235-239. Chen’s case is, of

course, symptomatic in many ways of the side-lining of several major pre-1949 figures.

304

Liu Xin and Xu Qian 1955: 30.

124

and as a consequence lacked objectivity.305

It existed to exploit workers and helped

capitalists and imperialists increase their profits.306

Among such broader grievances,

perhaps the most trenchant and specific charge was that it placed formal mathematical

doctrine 形式数学 at the very center of statistics. By doing so, it failed to distinguish

between the causal mechanisms behind functions (common to the natural world) and the

multifaceted relations captured by correlation (common to the social world).307

As a

result, it did not accurately take into account the economic content and reality of what

was being studied; nor did it adequately account for the relatedness of events.308

Or, put

another way, it failed to adequately take into consideration the inter-relatedness of the

quantitative 量 and qualitative 质 aspects of social phenomena.309

As Jin Guobao

explained in his self-criticism: probability theory was based on the independence of

events 几个事件各各独立, such as the coin toss or the throw of the dice, but “events in

society are inter-related and mutually constrained and definitely not independent [of each

other].”310

And so, many critiques concluded dismissively: by detaching itself from the

real world, bourgeois statistics was nothing but a numbers game 数字游戏.311

305

Liu Xin & Xu Qian 1955: 32; Zou Yiren 1956: 26; “资产阶级统计指数理论批判” Caijing yanjiu 《财

经研究》(1956.01): 16; Hu Daiguang 1955: 23

306

Zou Yiren 1956: 25.

307

Wang Sili 1957: 29.

308

Wang Jianzhen 1955: 40.

309

Zhang Zhiji 张知几 and Zou Yiren 邹依仁, eds. Dazhong tongji 大众统计 (People’s Statistics).

Shanghai: Xin zhishi chubanshe 新知识出版社 (New Knowledge Press), 1953, 3-4.

310

Jin Guobao 1957: 29. Also see: Wang Jianzhen 1955: 40.

311

Liu Xin and Xu Qian 1955: 21, 30; Hu Daiguang 1955: 25; Jin Guobao 1957: 31.

125

These broader critiques filtered into two specific areas where their impact is

clearly discernible: textbook content and the evaluation of specific statistical concepts. In

the very early years, form 1949 to 1953, new educational materials including textbooks

were produced either by the Northeast Statistical Bureau or by the Statistics Department

of People’s University. These materials usually consisted of compilations of reports，

speeches, and lectures by leaders such as Wang Sihua and Di Chaobai 狄超白 as well as

Soviet experts. By 1951, the compilations had taken the shape of sector- or activity-

specific handbooks. For instance, in 1951 the first in a series of reference materials was

published for trade and industrial statistics.312

Over the following two years, reference

materials were published on statistical theory, agriculture, the Northeast’s statistical work,

national income, and much else.313

By 1953, the Statistical Press 国家统计局出版社, the publishing division of the

State Statistics Bureau, had become active and would rapidly become a major producer of

didactic material. In addition to general textbooks, the Press published books that

discussed specific methods in various fields, shared experience gained, and so on.314

Provincial and city level statistics bureaus established their own presses and followed suit.

By the mid-1950s, general introductory textbooks were being produced for all levels of

312

Maoyi tongjixue cankao ziliao—yi 贸易统计学参考资料—I (Reference Materials for the Study of

Trade Statistics). Beijing: People’s University Statistics Department, 1951; Gongye tongjixue cankao ziliao

工业统计学参考资料 (Reference Materials for the Study of Industrial Statistics). Beijing: People’s

University Statistics Department, 1951.

313

Tongji lilun zhong de jige wenti 统计理论中的几个问题 (Some Questions in Statistical Theory). 1952;

Nongye tongjixue cankao ziliao 农业统计学参考资料 (Reference Materials for the Study of Agricultural

Statisitcs); 1952; Tongjixue cankao ziliao—yi 统计学参考资料—I (Introducing the Northeast’s Statistical

Work—Vol. 1); 1952; and Jingji tongjixue cankao ziliao—yi 经济统计学参考资料—I (Reference

Materials for the Study of Economic Statistics—Vol. 1); 1953.

314

In addition to volumes focusing on industry, agriculture, capital construction, etc., two other genres are

prominent: relating experience gained and reprints(?) of lectures.

126

students by several different organizations. Representative examples of such books

targeting beginners and non-specialist cadre are listed in Table 2 below.315

Table 2. Introductory Statistics Textbooks Title Authors/Editors/Compilers Publisher Date Comments

People’s Statistics316

Zhang Zhiji

张知几编

Zou Yiren ed

邹依仁校

New

Knowledge

Press

January

1953

Revised editions May 1954 and

1956. Self-Study material for the

common cadre; Middle-School

level

Lectures on Statistical

Principles—Vol. 1 &

2317

People’s University

Department of Statistical

Theory

People’s

University

Press

August

1956

This was the 4th edition (first

edition was in 1952) but the 9th

printing; including this print run, a

total of 60038 copies had been

produced

Common Problems in

Statistical Theory318

Lin Fude, Liu Xin, Jiang

Zhao, Xu Qian, Zheng

Yao, Zhou Fugong

Statistical

Press

March

1956

First edition; By January 1957 six

print runs, total 59,910 copies

These new volumes differed from pre-1949 textbooks with regard to their content

and their focus. In his 1954 report on Soviet statistics, Ostrovitianov had noted that the

controversy over the true nature of statistics had prompted some Soviet “economists and

statisticians to be afraid of making use of mathematical methods in investigating social

phenomena. This, evidently, is why the methods of mathematical statistics are almost

entirely neglected in the drafts of the textbook prepared by the Moscow Institute of

Economics and Statistics.”319

A similar pattern is discernable in the production of

315

More specialized textbooks and translations of Soviet textbooks also became increasingly available

through the course of the decade. See: Zu Ting’an祖廷安. “Siben gongye tongji shuji 四本工业统计书籍

(Four Books on Industrial Statistics).” Tongji gongzuo 《统计工作》(1958.01): 25.

316

Zhang Zhiji 张知几 and Zou Yiren 邹依仁, eds. Dazhong tongji 大众统计 (People’s

Statistics).Shanghai: Xin zhishi chubanshe 新知识出版社 (New Knowledge Press), 1953.

317

Renmin University. Tongjixue yuanli jiangyi—shangxia ce 统计学原理讲义—上下册 (Lectures on

Statistical Principles—Volumes 1 and 2). Beijing: People’s University Press, 1956.

318

State Statistics Bureau. Tongji lilun yiban wenti jianghua 统计理论一般问题讲话 (Common Problems

in Statistical Theory). Beijing: China Statistical Press, 1956.

319

Ostrovitianov 1955: 329.

127

textbooks and related educational material in China. As an illustration, Table 3 below

compares the tables of contents of the above three books against that of Jin’s An Outline

of Statistics.

128

Table 3. Comparison of Statistics Textbooks (n.b.: the shading identifies similar content across books)

Title An Outline of Statistics People's Statistics Lectures on Statistical Principles—Vol. 1 & 2

Common Problems in Statistical Theory

Year 1934 September 1953 first ed 1952, 4th edition in

1956 1956

Author Jin Guobao Zhang Zhiji People's University Statistics

Department

Lin Fude, Liu Xin, Jiang

Zhao, Xu Qian, Zheng Yao, Zhou Fugong

Publisher Commercial Press New Knowledge Press People's University Press Statistical Press

Print run ? ? 60,000 (upto 4th Ed) 59,910 (upto 6th ed)

Chapter

1 Introduction The Idea of Statistics

(Introduction)

The Object and Method of

Statistics

The Object and Method of

Statistics

2 Statistics Tables The Principle Method

of Collecting Data:

Statistical Reports

Statistical Surveys The Organization of

Statistics in the PRC

3 Statistical Charts A Subsidiary Method of

Collecting Data:

Specialized Surveys

Statistical Grouping Statistical Observation

4 Average Numbers Birds of a Feather:

Grouping and Sorting

The Organization and

Technology of Statistical Summaries and Statistical

Tables

The Aggregation and Grouping of Statistical Data

5 Variance Making Comparisons:

Relative Numbers Comprehensive Indices

The Organization and

Technology of Summary

Statistics: The Statistical Table

6 Probability and Error

normal curve

What is the Average?--

Average Numbers Dynamic Series

Absolute and Relative

Numbers

7 Skewness and torque Changing because of

Time: Dynamic Series Indices/Indicators

Average Numbers in

Statistics

8 Index Numbers Did the prices rise or

fall?--Price Indices Sample Surveys Dynamic Series

9 Important index numbers

in 5 countries

Did Production Rise or

Fall?--Product Volume

Indices

The Graphical Representation of Statistical Data

Indices/Index Numbers

10 Correlation Even More Striking are

Diagrams: Statistical

Illustration

The Development and Recent Organization of Statistics in the

USSR and New China

The Graphical Representation of Statistical

Data

11 Long-term trends

12 Seasonal variation

13 Cyclical Changes

14 Linking of Time Series

15 Non-linear

systems/correlation?

16 Other Types of Relations

(?)

17 Partial Relations? 偏系

联

18 响应

19 Business Forecasting

20 Collection and Collation

of Statistical Data

129

The first striking difference is the overwhelming emphasis on the collection,

grouping, and aggregation of data in the PRC era textbooks, where chapters devoted to

these activities usually follow the introductory chapter (Chapters 2, 3, 4 in two cases;

Chapters 3, 4, 5 in one). In contrast, An Outline of Statistics does have early chapters

discussing statistical tables and charts, but leaves a discussion of actual collection and

collation to a single chapter (20) at the very end. This inversion and change of emphasis

is indicative of the much more practical orientation of the PRC era textbooks. The

purpose of statistics was to produce data that could inform National Construction.

Statistical work, therefore, was the principal task and enjoyed preeminence over anything

else. In general, chapters in the three PRC era textbooks can be divided into four

categories: (1) Introduction; (2) Methods of collecting, collating (grouping), sorting, and

summarizing data; (3) exposition of key analytical tools (average numbers, indices, etc.);

and (4) graphical representation of statistical results. Even the chapters on analytical tools

focused only on various forms of average and index numbers (chapters 5-9; 5-8; and 6-9

respectively), which were the principal tools used to process rates of change, ascertain the

level of plan implementation, and carry out related analysis.

The most salient change, however, is the absence in the PRC volumes of any

chapters or content focusing on ‘mathematical’ statistics. In contrast, Jin devoted

individual chapters in An Outline of Statistics to topics such as Variance (chapter 5),

Probability and Errors (chapter 6), Correlation (chapter 10), and Time Series (chapters

11-14).320

Most of these topics were predicated on the acceptance and employment of

probability theory and the law of large numbers. Their elision in the PRC textbooks raises

320

In addition, by the 1950s, random sampling had become a major statistical method globally and was

being widely taught. For more on this, see Part III.

130

the question of what exactly was the status of mathematics within the new socialist

statistics. Chinese statisticians were quick to point out that they did not altogether reject

mathematics. Rather, they insisted that what was wrong was to take mathematical

statistics as the basis of all statistics; the use of mathematics to pursue statistical

calculations itself was perfectly reasonable.321

Thus, it was left to decide what particular

methods were best suited for use within a socialist society and economy. These debates

usually centered on four concepts: Measures of Central Tendency 平均数 (Average

numbers), Indices and Index numbers 指标与指数; Time Series 时间数列, and Sample

Surveys 抽样调查. Of these, the most fractious were the first two; let us turn to them

next.322

Measures of Central Tendency

Among the most important concepts that came up for debate and discussion were

measures of central tendency. Of the five principal measures of central tendency—the

mode 众数, the median 中位, the arithmetic mean 算术平均数, the geometric mean 几何

平均数, and the harmonic mean 调和平均数/倒数平均数—it was the last three that

321

“关于数理统计在社会经济统计科学中的地位与作用问题的讨论.” Caijing yanjiu 《财经研究》1958.3: 57. Ostrovitianov had included a similar exhortation in his 1954 report: “However, the use of the

best mathematical methods, where possible and appropriate, in studying social phenomena, is neither

shameful nor un-marxist. What should not be done is simply to substitute abstract mathematical formulae

for politico-economic analysis.” See: Ostrovitianov 1955: 329.

322

The question of sample surveys is addressed in Part III. One additional topic that came up for sporadic

discussion was the study of business cycles 商情预测, a prominent topic but one that was easy to dismiss

in a socialist setting since it studied market forces, was predicated on speculation, and used the tools of

probability analysis. See: Jin Guobao 1957: 31-32.

131

generated the greatest amount of debate.323

Among the key points of interest were the

importance of grouping 分组 and problems of bias 偏误 and of weights 权数.324

The problem of grouping brought together the socialist concern for melding

theory with economic realities on the ground. In his self-criticism, Jin Guobao cited an

example from Marx’s own writings to illustrate how average numbers could easily

mislead:

Imagine a situation where ten workers each worker earns 2 shillings every

week, five workers each earn 5 shillings per week, and another five earn

11 shillings per week. Thus, the total weekly income of these 20 workers

is 100 shillings, or 5 pounds. Now, imagine if total wages rose by 20%, so

that now the total weekly wage stood at 6 pounds. If we were to calculate

the new average wage, we would expect to see everyone’s wages rising by

20%. But in reality the wage hike only affected the two five-man teams,

one of which saw weekly wages go up to 6 shilling, and the other to 14

shilling. Thus, half of the total workforce saw no improvement in their

income, even though average income for all had indeed increased.325

As this example indicated, calculating the average wage hike actually served to distort

class distinctions. A similar analysis was made of American per capita GDP calculations,

which did not take into account the differences between the bourgeoisie and the

proletariat, thereby covering up 掩盖 the class contradictions of capitalism.326

In

textbooks, the importance of grouping was framed in a more positive light: attention to

group averages permitted the identification of advanced 先进 workers as well as those

lagging behind 落后.327

In this way, Chinese statisticians sought to stress that it was

323

Wang Sili 1957: 28-29.

324

Bias could be caused by weights 权偏误 or by the model itself 型偏误. Wang Jianzhen 1955: 41.

325

Jin Guobao 1957: 29.

326

Xu Qian and Liu Xin 1955: 33.

327

Common Problems in Statistical Theory 1957: 97-98.

132

absolutely critical to calculate not just total averages 总平均数 but also group averages

组平均数.328

The problem of bias 偏误 was used to interrogate which type of average was best

suited for making economic calculations. Most discussions of this subject initially offered

a simple example to illustrate that for any set of numbers the arithmetic mean (AM) was

larger than the geometric mean (GM), which was in turn larger than the harmonic mean

(HM). For example, given the three numbers 400, 300, 200, the corresponding mean

values would be329

:

AM = (400+300+200)/3 = 300

GM = √ = 286

HM = 3/(1/400 + 1/300 + 1/200) = 277

But as Wang Sili explained, such numbers did not represent any real situation on the

ground and therefore this example merely served to highlight the different results

obtained via the use of the three different methods. Given such an example, therefore,

each type of mean could theoretically be correct. If, however, examples with actual

economic content were considered, then it would become apparent that in one instance it

was the AM that was the only correct choice, and in another, the HM. Consider the

following two cases that were discussed by Wang Jianzhen330

:

328

Jin Guobao 1957: 30; Xu and Liu 1955: 30, 32-33; Wang Sili 1957: 28 also emphasized the importance

of grouping.

329

Example drawn from Wang Jianzhen 1955: 41; other instances of the relationship between AM, GM,

and HM were also listed in “资产阶级统计指数理论批判” 《财经研究》1956.01, pp. 13; Jin 1957: xx

330

Example from: Wang Jianzhen: 1955: 41.

133

Case I: Three types of food products 甲、乙、丙 have the following production and

pricing characteristics.

A B C D

Product

Quantity

(tons 吨)

Price/ton

(元)

Value (%)

甲 5,00 400 20

乙 1,000 300 30

丙 2,500 200 50

If all products were considered together, what would be the combined average price of

each ton be? According to Wang Jianzhen, the only suitable method to arrive at such a

price was to use the arithmetic mean:

Average Price = (500x400 + 1000x300 + 2500x200) / (500+1000+2500)

= 250 元

Case II: If, on the other hand, the only information available was the price of each

product and their relative value in monetary terms, that is columns C and D, then to

answer the same question only the method of the harmonic mean would suffice:

Average Price = (20 + 30 + 50) / (

)

= 250 元

In neither case was the geometric mean the appropriate choice. And yet, that is precisely

what bourgeois statistics would have preferred and what had been preferred by the

various bureaus of the Nationalist Government prior to 1949.331

As Wang Jianzhen and

other Chinese statisticians explained, bourgeois statistics considered the GM superior to

the AM and the HM because it lay between the other two, and therefore was putatively

331

See Li Deyin’s 厉德寅 statement in: “Zichan jieji tongji zhishu lilun pipan 资产阶级统计指数理论批

判.” Caijing yanjiu 《财政研究》 (1956.01): 17. Also see discussion of index numbers below.

134

less biased.332

Indeed, in a paper read at the eighty-second (1920) annual meeting of the

American Statistical Association, the noted mathematical economist Irving Fisher had

observed:

As to bias, it can be shown that the arithmetic average has an upward bias,

i.e., has in the very nature of the arithmetic process a natural tendency to

give results too large, that the harmonic has a downward bias, that the

geometric, median, and mode have no inherent bias in either direction.333

The tendency in the PRC, therefore, was to ignore the GM. For instance, the

chapter on average numbers in People’s Statistics did not even discuss GMs, listing only

the four other measures of central tendency and devoting the most space to the AM.334

But the GM was not entirely dismissed. The SSB’s Common Problems in Statistical

Theory discussed it, but explained that its use was extremely limited.335

As Hu Daiguang

explained elsewhere, the appropriate use of the GM to calculate rates of growth ought to

be restricted to only those instances where the individual rates represented unidirectional

change (consistently up or consistently down) over the entire time-period under study.336

In all other instances, the GM was nothing but an example of mere mathematical

formalism.337

And it was in this form and this form only that we see the GM being used

332

Wang Jianzhen 1955: 41; Jin Guobao 1957: 30; “Zichan jieji tongji zhishu lilun pipan 资产阶级统计指

数理论批判.” Caijing yanjiu 《财经研究》(1956.01): 13.

333

Fisher, Irving. “The Best Form of Index Number.” Quarterly Publications of the American Statistical

Association 17, no. 133 (March 1921): 536.

334

Zhang Zhiji 1953: 41-51 (chapter 5).

335

Common Problems in Statistical Theory 1957: 113.

336

Hu Daiguang 1955: 26-27.

337

For a more detailed explanation of this line of reasoning, see: Jin Guobao 1957: 30. As Jin explained,

the geometric mean of five annual growth rates A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, was calculated by taking into account

only the first and last rates, A1 and A5. Therefore, it could not tell us anything about A2, A3, or A4, or the

fluctuations they may represent.

135

to calculate the combined annual growth rate in industry and agriculture.338

The

implication of much of this is that several growth rates and related statistical measures

were calculated using measures such as the AM, which leaves open the possibility that

our sense of the changes in the 1950s is based on numbers that may possess an upward

bias.

Indicators and Index numbers

The mean is a specific type of indicator and the distinction drawn between its three types

was itself part of a wider discussion on indicators and index numbers. Broadly speaking,

an index number is “a quantity which shows by its variations the changes over time or

space of a magnitude which is not susceptible to direct measurement in itself or to direct

observation in practice.”339

Examples of index numbers include those for wholesale

prices, labor productivity, cost, business activity, physical volume of production, cost of

living, and many more. The calculation of index numbers were considered absolutely

essential to socialist statistics and it is here that the antipathy toward mathematical

statistics became most transparent.340

In a book on industrial statistics A. I. Ezhov, the

Deputy Director of the Central Statistical Administration of the Soviet Union and the first

Soviet statistical expert in China (1950-1952), had stressed the superiority of socialist

338

State Statistics Bureau. Weida de shinian 伟大的十年 (Ten Great Years). Beijing: People’s Press, 1959,

90. The table in question lists the average annual rate of increase in output of major products (Steel, Pig

Iron, Coal, Electric Power, etc.) for three time periods: 1950-52, 1953-57, and 1950-58. For each time-

period, the method used is the GM. The data used to calculate these rates is in tables on p. 84-89.

339

“Important features in the construction of an index number are its coverage, base period, weighting

system and method of averaging observations. The term can also be applied to a series of values which are

standardized by being referred to a basic period or area.” The Oxford Dictionary of Statistical Terms (2003):

197. A contemporary Chinese definition can be found in Xu Qian and Liu Xin 1955: 34.

340

Xu Qian and Liu Xin 1955: 34.

136

statistics by observing that: “Industrial statistics of all major capitalist countries does not,

owing to the absence of a centralized governmental statistics, possess a number of

important indicators and many indicators are estimated indirectly.”341

The central challenge in arriving at a good index number is to be able to account

for changes in all variables; for instance in the case of price indices, this would mean

accounting for changes in price and in quantity. While numerous indices had been

proposed and numerous tests devised to check their quality, the problem of over- or

under-estimation had remained unresolved.342

To get around this problem, in 1921 the

mathematical economist Irving Fisher had proposed what he labeled the ‘two supreme

tests’ that could help determine the formula for an ideal index: first, that it “should work

both ways as to the two factors, prices and quantities”; and second, that “the formula

should work both ways as to time.”343

Irving Fisher, who was regarded as the foremost American economist by several

of his most accomplished peers, including Joseph Schumpeter, James Tobin, and Milton

Friedman, was also a brilliant statistician and among the pioneers of the subfield of

econometrics.344

Among the many areas in which he made seminal contributions was the

341

A. I. Ezhov Industrial Statistics ( т т т п о ыш о т ). Calcutta: Statistical Publishing House,

1958, 2.

342

For instance, two basic price indices are the Paasche index (named after the Hermann Paasche) and

the Laspeyres index (named after the Etienne Laspeyres). In the former, prices are weighted by the

quantities of the given period and in the latter they are weighted by the quantities in the base period. See:

The Oxford Dictionary of Statistical Terms (2003): 227-228, 299.

343

Fisher 1921: 534. The equivalent Chinese terms were: 时间互换测验 and 因子互换测验 (source?)

344

See, for instance: Joseph Schumpeter (Ten Great Economists 1952: 223), James Tobin 1987, and Milton

Friedman (Money Mischief 1992: 37).

137

study of index numbers.345

Fisher also had a direct link to Chinese statistical practice

during the 1920s and 1930s. During his time as a PhD student at Yale, the economist

Franklin L. Ho (He Lian 何廉, 1895-1975) had worked with Fisher in developing index

numbers. Upon his graduation in 1926, Ho returned to China and took up an appointment

as professor of public finance and statistics at Nankai University. At Nankai, Ho put to

good use the $500 gift he had received from Fisher and organized the Committee on

Social and Economic Research. This committee would eventually become the

Department of Economics in the early 1930s. Among Ho’s first research related activities

was the compilation of historical price indices calculated by applying Fisher’s ideal index

to over sixty years of price and quantity data from the Chinese Maritime Customs Service.

These indices, as well as others that Ho and his colleagues calculated, were published

between 1934 and 1936 in Nankai Index Numbers.346

For China’s socialist statisticians after 1949, however, in promoting the concept

of an ideal index formula 理想公式347, Fisher was conflating two distinct problems: what

type of mean to use and what type of weights to use. According to them, Fisher had

begun by assuming that the problem was a mathematical one. He had completely ignored

the economic content of the various indices. 348

Fisher thus became the embodiment for

345

See: Fisher 1922: 533–537; and Irving Fisher. The Making of Index Numbers: A Study of Their Varieties,

Tests, and Reliability. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Compan, 1922.

346

H.D. Fong. “Recollections of Early Research on Chinese Economy.” The Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese

Studies 清华学报 3 & 4, no. 1 (1963): 69-86, 70, 72. Also see: Trescott 2007: 263-264 (the proliferation of

index number calculation across China); Chiang 2001: 84 (Franklin Ho’s obsession with calculating

indices).

347

Jin Guobao 1957: 30

348

“资产阶级统计指数理论批判” 《财经研究》1956.01, pp. 19; Jin Guobao 1957: 31; Xu Qian and Liu

Xin 1955: 34

138

the failings of bourgeois statistics as a whole.349

His two tests as well as “eight big

formulas” 两大测验与八大公式 were discussed and their failings dissected in detail by

several interlocutors.350

Fisher may have served as a productive focal point for the critique of Anglo-

American bourgeois index number theory, but for all their deliberations, socialist

statisticians in China did not propose any suitable or sophisticated alternatives.351

Given

such an absence, the most frequently used types of index numbers were of a much

simpler kind, which focused on year-on-year change, or took one particular year as the

base year and tracked nominal changes in future years based on that. The following two

tables from Ten Great Years provide an example of each such case.352

349

Wang Jianzhen 1955: 41: “这些反动的观点在资产阶级统计和指数“理论”的“巨擘”费喧 [Fisher] 的

著作中，表现得最为彻底和露骨.”

350

See, for instance: i) “Zichan jieji tongji zhishu lilun pipan 资产阶级统计指数理论批判.” Caijing

yanjiu 《财政研究》 (1956.01): 17-18; ii) Jin Guobao 1957: 28, 30-31; and (iii) Wang Jianzhen 1955: 41.

351

Discussions incorporated a critique of a wide variety of index numbers, such as composite index 综合指

标, aggregate index 总量指标, relative index 相对指标, average index 平均指标, structural index 结构指

标, comparative index 比较指标, strength index 强度指标, dynamic index 动态指标, and so on.

352

Ten Great Years 1959: 16, 80.

139

The table above provides index numbers for annual Industrial and Agricultural

Production from 1950 to 1959. For each year (row), the previous year (row immediately

above) is taken to be the base (i.e. 100). Thus, we can see that total industrial and

agricultural output in 1957 was 107.8 or 7.8% greater than that in 1956. The primary

driver of this increase was industrial growth (114 or 11.4%) and not agricultural growth

(103.5 or 3.5%). In the table below, on the other hand, all comparisons were made taking

1949 as the base year (=100). Thus, the growth in modern industry by 1957 was just over

7 times (703.1) that in 1949.

140

Conclusion

Neither of these transitions—the disciplining of a generation of statisticians and the

changes in content—happened overnight, even though that was very much the idea

behind the re-organization of schools and disciplines in 1952 院系调整.353

Genuine

concerns about capitalism—such as the existence of incentives to dress up data to fool

people and favor private interests—were conflated with the perceived weakness of

353

The readjustment of universities and faculties 高校院系调整 was carried out in an attempt to Sovietize

the existing educational structure. In the humanities and social sciences the starkest change was in the de-

legitimization of such disciplines as Sociology and Anthropology, both of which ceased to exist.

141

specific statistical methods. In some ways, many of these criticisms and self-criticisms

may have been storms in a teapot, since the bigger and significantly more far-reaching

changes were happening in the world of actual statistical work. Indeed, the far more

telling rupture in statistics in the early PRC was in statistical practice, where changes in

practice preceded and served as markers for the changes in scientific discourse that were

to follow. In Part II of this dissertation we shall explore different elements of statistical

practice in greater detail.

The narrower range of statistical theory that was taught starting in the 1950s did,

however, significantly limit the abilities of several generations of practicing statisticians.

The strong boundaries established between the social science of statistics and

mathematical statistics left both communities of scientists (and practitioners) mutually

ignorant. Particularly revealing in this regard is the case of the statistician Xu Baolu 许宝

騄.354

Born in 1910355

in Beijing, Xu did his undergraduate work at Tsinghua University

清华大学, from where he graduated with a degree in mathematics. He then spent four

years at University College, London, earning a PhD in 1938 and a ScD in 1940, both in

mathematical statistics. Upon his return to Beijing, he was appointed a professor in the

Department of Mathematics at Peking University. Barring a two-year stint in the United

354

For more on Xu Baolu 许宝騄, see:

(1) T.W Anderson, K.L. Chung, and E.L. Lehmann. “Pao-Lu Hsu 1909-1970.” The Annals of

Statistics 7, no. 3 (1979): 467-470.

(2) Jiang Xuepei 江学培. “Beijing daxue jinian—zhuming shuxuejia, tongjixuejia, Xu Baolu jiaoshou

北京大学纪念—著名数学家、统计学家许宝騄教授 (Beijing Univeristy Memorial—The

Famous Mathematician and Statistician, Professor Xu Baolu).” Tongji 统计, (1981.01): 39.

(3) Chen Jiading and Zheng Zhongguo. “Academic Achievements of Professor P.L. Hsu.” Review

essay on the website of the International Chinese Statistical Association, 2010. Accessed online:

http://www.icsa.org/awards/PLHsu2.pdf.

355

There appears to be some disagreement on his date of birth. One biography lists September 1, 1910;

another 1909.

142

States from 1945 to 1947, he spent the rest of his career there. Xu’s major area of

research was probability theory and mathematical statistics and he is today identified as

the first person in China to engage in research in these areas:356

“He was the first Chinese

who was internationally recognized in the area of probability and statistics,” and counted

among his friends E.A. Pearson and Jerzy Neyman.357

These are precisely the areas that

socialist statistics refused to include within its purview. And yet, none of the criticisms

targeting bourgeois statistics ever touched Xu. Why?—because he was based in a

department of mathematics.

This dichotomy between statistics and mathematical statistics cut both ways—it

constrained what each knew of the other—and remained influential into the 1980s. In a

recent conversation, the Harvard statistician Xiao-Li Meng related to me that the first

time he encountered a histogram with actual data was in graduate school in the United

States in 1986. Before that, as a student of mathematics and mathematical statistics at

Fudan University in Shanghai, his curriculum had been purely theoretical and did not

involve engagement with data.358

356

See: Jiang Xuepei 1981: 39.

357

Chen and Zheng 2010: 1; Anderson, Chung, and Lehmann 1979: 468. A survey of Chinese contributions

to statistics noted: “It was Professor Pao-Lu Hsu (许宝騄) who first introduced modern statistics to China

in the 1940s. He was also the first Chinese statistician to win a renowned international reputation in his

field. ” See: Chen, X. R., K.T. Fang, and C.C. Yang, eds. The Development of Statsistics: Recent

Contributions from China. Harlow, Essex: Longman Scientific and Technical, 1992, 1.

358

Discussion with Xiao-Li Meng, Professor of Statistics and Dean of GSAS, Harvard University,

Cambridge, MA, 12 December 2013.

143

PART II

STATISTICS IN ACTION

144

CHAPTER V

The Nature of Statistical Work

145

Too much Civil Service work consists of circulating

information that isn't relevant about subjects that don't

matter to people who aren't interested.359

From a very early stage, the idealized version of statistical work that had been espoused

in the writings of Wang Sihua and claimed as having been largely achieved by the

Northeast Statistical Bureau had to face up to reality of expansion across a vast, complex,

and largely agrarian landscape. Through the work of the Northeast Statistics Bureau and,

in particular, the writings of Wang Sihua, a model of statistical work had been articulated

that valorized extensiveness (across economy and society), completeness (of the

statistical system), and objectivity (about social fact). This model was predicated on the

primacy of exhaustive enumeration; other methods of data collection, notably surveys,

were of secondary importance and only to be used in a supplementary or as-needed basis.

As shown in Part I, that such a valuation of methods was the only correct choice had been

based on a concerted and unambiguous theoretical understanding of the social world and

how to account for it. By 1951, the state and party leadership were in a position to start

thinking about expanding the Northeast’s system across the country and establishing a

unified national statistical system.

This chapter focuses principally on the roughly six years from 1952 to 1957, a

period during which a national statistical bureau and a large nationwide network of

subsidiary statistical offices at provincial, city and county levels were set up. The concern

here is no longer with the articulation of an ideal, but with its actual practice. As a period

that includes within it China’s first five-year plan (1953-1957), it witnessed the

359

Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn 1989. The Complete Yes Minister. BBC Books; New Ed edition.

Preface. Source: http://www.jonathanlynn.com/tv/yes_minister_series/yes_minister_episode_quotes.htm

146

inextricable linking, at least in a putative sense, of statistics and planning. In the third

chapter in this part, I shall explore this linkage in greater detail. The goal of this chapter,

however, is to offer a sense of the nature of statistical work and the challenges that it

faced. The chapter is divided into five principal sections. The first section offers a brief

institutional history of the establishment of the State Statistics Bureau and the expansion

of a national network under it. The remaining sections are organized schematically

around the four key tasks of statistical work in the PRC: Collection 收集,

Collation/Ordering 整理, Research 研究, and Supply提供.360

Of these four, collection 收

集 and supply 提供 were considered the more fundamental tasks.361

The nature of statistical activity during this period not only mirrored broader

bureaucratic and governance-related trends and forces frequently identified with the mid-

1950s, but by constraining them also gave them their shape.362

The first of these key

trends was the increasing degree of complexity across the economy as new factories and

industries were set up, agriculture was re-organized and subsequently nationalized, and a

new system of remuneration put in place, all against the background of sustained

360

See for instance, Xue Muqiao’s closing remarks at the Sixth National Meeting of Statistical Work (薛暮

桥局长在第六届全国统计工作会议上的总结报告(记录)). BMA 133-001-00090: 83 ( p. 3 of 7 of

document). Xue had used a similar list earlier in during the same meeting, when delivering his report on

experience gained in statistical work over the course of the first five-year plan. See: Xue Muqiao 薛暮桥.

“Di yige wunian jihua qijian woguo tongji gongzuo de chubu jingyan he jinhou renwu 第一个五年计划期

间我国统计工作的初步经验和今后任务 (The Preliminary Experience and Recent Tasks of Statistical

Work during our country’s First Five-Year Plan Period).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作 1957.21: 1-21, 1, 6.

Numerous other instances of similar listings exist. For instance, in his self-criticism Zou Yiren also listed

the same four tasks. See: Zou Yiren 1956: 26

361 Xue Muqiao 1957: 5. This categorization is, of course, not unique to the PRC or to socialist statistics.

Jin Guobao in his An Outline of Statistics (1934) also offered the same four-fold breakdown for the

procedural methods associated with statistics. See: Jin Guobao 1934: 8.

362

For a general discussion of this period, Franz Schurmann’s work still remains a useful resource. See:

Schurmann 1968.

147

economic growth. For statistics, this meant an expansion of the types of data that needed

to be collected as well as an expansion into the more virgin territory of performing

statistical analysis and research based on the data that had been collected. Complexity

also brought into focus issues of bureaucratic organization and coordination across

various bureaus and organs. Another key trend through the mid-1950s was the push

towards greater decentralization. Decision-making power, especially as it pertained to

implementation of policies decided at the central level, was frequently devolved to the

Provinces or lower. In statistics, this broader push toward decentralization came up

against the centralizing tendencies of the statistical apparatus. A resolution was attempted

via the principle of ‘unified leadership, dispersed (by grade) management’ 统一领导，分

级管理, which favored allowing local party and government administration to execute

the work as they saw fit and without too much oversight.363

This tension between

centralization and decentralization, in turn, brings into focus the two forms of political

and executive authority—horizontal and vertical—that were a feature of both the

organization and prosecution of statistical work.364

Finally, a third key feature of the

period was the realization that agriculture was absolutely critical to the economic fortunes

and socialist goals of the PRC. Best articulated in statements that simultaneously

reiterated the primacy of industry while also elevating agriculture to near equal status,

such a rebalancing of emphasis forced the SSB to confront the unreliability of

agricultural data and the unsuitability of the methods used to collect that data.

363

BMA 133-001-00090: 83.

364

For a general discussion of this decentralization as well as vertical and horizontal forms of governance,

see Schurmann 1968.

148

Statistical work was thus carried out within the larger unfolding context of

increasing complexity, changing (economic) focus, and struggles over administrative

devolution. As work got more complicated and demanding, the engagement with and

discussion about statistical activities grew more sophisticated—methods were expanded,

analysis was undertaken, and the results of such analysis circulated amongst leaders and

bureaucrats. However, as the following chapter will show, a key problem remained—the

system that had been set up incentivized the over-production of reports and the state had

little or no capacity to handle the resulting excess reports. This meant that in the interests

of maintaining timeliness 及时性, which director of the SSB, Xue Muqiao would

repeatedly state was of higher importance than correctness 正确性, there was an ever

increasing disjuncture between local data and regional and national data. Whereas local

data collected was often of reasonably good quality, the need to report it up it in a timely

fashion meant that estimation was permitted.365

As a result, the further up it was reported,

the more estimation was likely used, rendering provincial and eventually national data

victim to gross inaccuracies.

Furthermore, given their reliance on the systematic collection, collation, and

upward reporting of data, statisticians had no independent and systematic means available

to check the accuracy of the numbers their system was generating.366

At the same time,

such a system was particularly prone to delays. Archival reports of statistical work are

full of complaints about factories, work units, as well as agricultural cooperatives, all

falling behind reporting schedules. Delays combined with excess issuing thus created an

absolutely chaotic situation by the mid-1950s, leading Wang Sihua to lament that 365

See, for instance: BMA 002-020-00746: 12.

366

The best methods were to do spot-checks or one-time surveys. See: People’s Statistics 1956: 9-13.

149

statistical work remained unable to address the needs of the Planning Commission and

the demands of the nation’s leaders.367

Expansion of a National Network

Prior to September of 1952, when the State Statistics Bureau (the National Statistical

agency) was set up, the only bureau 局 of statistical work in the People’s Republic was

the Northeast Statistics Bureau, headquartered in Shenyang (and discussed in Part I,

Chapter 1). That does not, of course, mean that no statistical work was carried out during

the first three years. Much of this work was coordinated through Finance and Economics

Committees 财政经济委员会 and statistical departments 处 and branches 科, which

collected data or prepared estimates based on pre-existing data. In similar fashion,

regional and provincial levels of government possessed statistics divisions, as did the

various ministries. Most statistical reports were compiled through their efforts.368

The key

national level coordinating institution was the Central Finance and Economics Committee,

which was set up on July 21, 1949. Composed of six departments, it was led by Chen

Yun 陈云, who was in turn supported by such figures as Bo Yibo 薄一波, Ma Yinchu 马

寅初, Li Fuchun 李富春, and Xue Muqiao.369

It was this Central Finance and Economics Committee that initiated discussions

about a national statistical system. In July of 1951, Li Fuchun 李富春, a Deputy Director

367

See: Wang 1986: 100-101.

368

For instance, a Work Department of the CPC Central Finance and Economy was set up in July of 1948

headed by Dong Biwu 董必武, with Xue Muqiao 薛暮桥 as the Secretary. A Department of Customs

Statistics was set up in early 1950. See: DSJ: 1-2

369

See: DSJ: 2.

150

of the Committee, chaired a national level conference on Financial and Economic

Statistics to start discussing how to implement the Northeast model on a national scale.

Held in Beijing from the 16th

to the 20th

of the month, this conference would in later years

be retroactively dubbed the first National Meeting on Statistical Work.370

Eighty-five

delegates, joined by 91 observers 列席代表, gathered to address for the first time the

statistical needs of the country as a whole.371

Echoing Stalin decades earlier, Li would

observe in his speech that without statistical data the tasks of national construction,

planning, and economic work could not be undertaken. He also went on to make clear

that China would learn socialism from the Soviet Union, and take Marxism-Leninism as

her guiding principle, criticizing Anglo-American capitalist statistics along the way. But

the key task before the conference was the question of a national statistical system;

something that even after two years the PRC did not possess. It was Wang Sihua who

proposed setting up a national statistical agency, which would centrally guide statistical

work across the country.372

The details of such a national system were articulated by the main Soviet

Statistical expert and advisor, A. Ezhov 叶诺夫.373

In an address delivered on the

penultimate day of the conference, Ezhov pointed out that while all across at the regional

370

In all, there would be another five such annual national meetings of statistical work 全国统计工作会议,

all held in Beijing: December 1952, February 1954, February 1955, February 1956, and September 1957.

For details, see DSJ and the three volumes of Tongji gongzuo zhongyao wenjian huibian 《统计工作重要

文件汇编》 (Compilation of Important Documents Relating to Statistical Work). Beijing: Statistical Press,

1955, 1957, 1959.

371

Discussions ranged across how to ascertain guiding principles 方针 and specific tasks 任务, what

methods 方法 to employ, organizational questions 机构, and the training and cultivation of cadre 干部.

372

See: DSJ: 6; Wang 1986: 225

373

As discussed in Part I, Ezhov, a deputy director of the Soviet Statistical Bureau, arrived in China

sometime in early 1950 and returned to the Soviet Union presumably sometime in February 1952.

151

level a lot of statistical work had been done, China still lacked national statistics under a

unified leadership structure. Therefore, the most urgent task was to link the different

statistical activities under one unified system. Yezhov identified nine key tasks. The most

important of these was the absolute necessity of one unified seamless system that linked

the local to the central and the ministry to the work unit, with clear lines of command and

oversight. To man this system, a large body of trained cadre was needed. The Northeast

Statistics Bureau was to serve as the model for all other provincial and city level bureaus

across the country as they went about setting-up such a system.374

It took nearly another year for the National Meeting’s recommendations to be put

into effect. On August 7 1952, Xue Muqiao was appointed the head of the newly

established State Statistics Bureau (SSB).375

The Bureau began operations the following

month, on September 8. In a report delivered to the Central Finance Committee 中财委,

Xue noted that the Bureau had set up a secretariat 秘书厅, and departments for

summary/comprehensive 综合 statistics, industrial statistics, agricultural statistics, trade

statistics, capital construction, and communications statistics. In addition, also set up

374

The nine points were (See: DSJ: 5-6):

1. From the enterprise to the bureau/department and from the local to the central, institutions and

systems should be set up as part of one seamless system.

2. Cultivation of cadre must begin with cultivation of their thought. Their training can be dispersed, but

must be centrally administered. Should also consider distance learning.

3. The Center and regional administrations must produce a Statistical Work Handbook 《统计工作手

册》

4. Upper levels of the apparatus must oversee the lower levels: inspect their work, enforce deadlines,

and offer guidance and help.

5. Rapidly clean-up useless, chaotically issued reports. 清理无用的、乱发的报表.

6. Reports should be simplified, especially comprehensive reports.

7. Lower levels should report, upper levels should offer judgment and instructions

8. Extensively use and study the experience of the NE.

9. Extract the essence 抽取精华 from already collected statistical data and carry out analyses so that it

is easy to compare [and assess] the development that has been made

375

See: DSJ: 7. Wang Sihua was appointed one of the Bureau’s Deputy Directors and put in charge of

Industrial Statistics. See: Wang 1986: 225.

152

were sections devoted to labor wage statistics 劳动工资统计, distribution of goods 物资

分配, and the world economy 世界经济, for a total of ten sections.376

Departments

devoted to culture and education and to social statistics 社会统计 had yet to be set up.

The plan was to employ about 250 people across these offices (excluding those working

part-time).377

A few months after the establishment of the SSB, a Second National Meeting of

Statistical Work took place from 15 to 22 December in Beijing. It included an agenda-

setting address by the famed military commander and recently appointed vice-chairman

of the central government, Zhu De 朱德. For the most part, Zhu’s speech covered ground

already trodden by Ezhov. One notable difference was in how he framed the importance

of statistical work. In this, he was much more in agreement with Wang Sihua’s speeches

from his time in the Northeast: statistical work was necessary because it was the basis of

a planned economy. Zhu thus reiterated Wang Sihua’s call for a united statistical

apparatus and his exhortation was subsequently repeated by Xue Muqiao in his own

speech to the delegates.

One of the primary tasks identified at the Second National Meeting was the need

to set up regional, provincial, and city level statistical offices as part of one unified

national network. In a letter dated 14 April 1953 and delivered to all regions, provinces,

and cities, Xue Muqiao noted that by March-end five regions and eighteen provinces and

376

See: DSJ: 7-8. For a chart depicting the seven departments in 1952, see DSJ: 492

377

In a survey conducted over the following month it was established that there were 354 statistical

workers in the main offices of the six administrative regions and in Inner Mongolia. Another 766 statistical

workers were in the various province level finance committees. The total thus was 1120 workers: North 98,

Northeast 388, East 240, South-Central 168, Southwest 111, Northwest 95, and Inner Mongolia 20. See:

DSJ: 9

153

cities had reported the successful establishment of statistical offices.378

But the status of

statistical offices of the South-Central Region as well as twenty-three other provinces and

cities remained unknown. He proceeded to accept the SSB’s culpability in causing some

of these delays: the organizational guidelines about a national statistical network had,

after all, only been disseminated in early March. Even so, he urged the recalcitrant to

rapidly establish statistical offices.379

As shown in Table 1, Xue’s exhortation met with direct results. By the end of

June 1953, all but Liaoning and Qinghai had set up regional, provincial, or city-level

statistical offices.380

According to the sanctioned size of different provincial bureaus at

time of establishment, 1275 statistical workers were distributed across twenty-four

bureaus. Average bureau size was about fifty-three workers.381

City level bureaus,

however, were often larger: Shanghai had ninety-six statistical workers and Beijing sixty-

five. Most bureaus were organized into Departments 处, Offices 室, Branches 科, and

Teams 组.382

378

These were: Northeast, North, East, Southwest, Northwest, and Inner Mongolia, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei,

Shaanxi, Suiyuan 绥远 (), Guangdong, Hubei, Hunan, Henan, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Anhui, Chongqing,

Yunnan, Xi’an, Shanxi, Shenyang, Luda 旅大. See BMA 002-020-00670: 1.

379

BMA 002-020-00670: 1. The directive was issued on April 14 1953.

380

The Liaoning 辽宁 Statistical Bureau was formed by merging the Liaodong 辽东 and Liaoxi 辽西

bureaus in August 1954. The Liaodong and Liaoxi Statistics Bureaus had been set up separately in May

and August 1950 respectively, under the aegis of the Northeast Statistics Bureau. Evidence from the

directive, the first document in BMA 002-020-00670, is not always consistent with the dates published in

the DSJ. For instance, the BMA document notes that Anhui had already set up a statistical bureau by March

1953. The DSJ, however, lists it as happening in June of that year.

381

These numbers and estimates are based on information culled from the DSJ: 7-35.

382

I have not found uniform guidelines delineating a department from an office and a branch; considerable

variation likely existed. For instance, in 1957, the Henan Statistics Bureau made the following

recommendation: cities with populations greater than 0.5 million should set up a Bureau 局, those with a

population between 0.2 and 0.5 million should set up a Department 处, and those with fewer than 0.2

million should set up an Office 室. See: BMA 133-001-00091: 14.

154

Table 1. Establishment of National, Regional, Provincial, and City Level Statistics Bureaus

Source: 中华人民共和国统计大事记，1949-2009 （国家统计局编）, pp. 1-35

Date set up Province/City

Authorized

Staff Notes

August 7 1952 National SSB Established, Xue Muqiao Director

September 8 1952 National SSB Starts Operations

January 12 1953 National

Set up stats 局、科、处 in various bureaus and organs of the

central government

November 26 1954 National SSB first Bureau listed under reorganized State Council

April 4 1950 Northeast ?

January of 1953 Northwest 80

February 1 1953 North China 60

Stopped funtioning on August 5 1954, when large admin

regions were canceled.

March 13 1953 Southwest 70 Located in Chongqing

March of 1953 East 110 Located in Shanghai. Stopped work by end of year.

May 1 1953 South-Central 80

December of 1952 Inner Mongolia 45

The Suiyuan 绥远 Bureau was set up in March 1953, and later

incorprated into the Inner Mongolia Bureau

January of 1953 Hebei 70

January of 1953 Hubei 60

February 1 1953 Guangdong 57

Built on work done by the province's 调查统计委员会 and

the 华南财委计划局统计处

February 9 1953 Yunnan 55

March 4 1953 Zhejiang 65

March 12 1953 Shanxi 55

March 14 1953 Shandong 90

March 15 1953 Henan 66

April 1 1953 Shaanxi

April 24 1953 Guizhou

April of 1953 Heilongjiang 50

April of 1953 Jiangxi 50 Prior organ: 省财委统计室

May 25 1953 Sichuan 80

May of 1953 Jilin 55

Established by abolishing

吉林省人民经济计划委员会统计处

May of 1953 Hunan 50

May of 1953 Xinjiang 15

统计处 was changed to 统计局. Oct. 1 1955 the

新疆维吾尔自治区 was established, 统计局 accordingly

transferred. June 1957 started setting up 科室机构.

June 9 1953 Anhui 65 Built on foundation of: 安徽省人民政府财经委员会统计处

June of 1953 Fujian 45

In December 1957, became part of the 福建省计划委员会; In

October 1959 it was again separated became again

June of 1953 Guangxi In 1958 it was changed to the 广西壮族自治区统计局

June of 1953 Ningxia 99 1954.9.23: Ningxia merged with Gansu

July of 1953 Gansu 50

August of 1954 Liaoning 124

辽东 and 辽西 were merged to form 辽东. 辽东 and 辽西

Bureaus had been set up separately in May and August 1950

January of 1955 Qinghai 29 Previously: 省人民政府计划委员会统计处

1950? Shenyang

1953? Chongqing

Jaunary 30 1953 Beijing 65

March 5 actually set up on the foundation of the

北京市财委统计科

March 5 1953 Tianjin 65

Formed by combining:

(1)津市财政经济委员会统计处，(2)天津市委国营工业部统

计组，and (3)天津市人民政府研究室统计科

March? 1953 Xi'an

April 1 1953 Shanghai 96

155

As a result of the restructuring of government organs that took place in 1954 (in

the wake of the first people’s Congress), the State Statistics Bureau was identified as the

first among 20 organizations [机关 or 机构] directly subordinate 直属 to the newly

formed State Council 国务院 (which had replaced the Government Administrative

Council of the Common Program era, 1949-1954).383

This is the national structure that

remained in place till the summer of 1958.

By 1956, the SSB main office in Beijing had expanded and consisted of thirteen

key branches. Two of these were offices 室 dedicated to administration and research. Six

divisions 司 handled statistics relating to comprehensive/summary 综合, industry,

agriculture, capital construction, trade, and distribution of supplies. In addition, there

were five departments 处 dedicated to transportation, labor wages, culture, education, and

compilation (publication).384

By the following year, the total number of statistical cadre

claimed was in the region of 190,000 to 200,000.385

The SSB headquarters in Beijing

itself reported about 650 dedicated staff. Outside of regional, provincial, and city level

offices, statistical activity was undertaken by a mixture of full-time and part-time staff.

This was especially the case at the more local level. For instance, statisticians at the

factory level frequently doubled up as accountants 会计 as well.

383

The reorganization occurred after the First People’s Congress, wherein the Common Program, in place

since 1949, was set aside for a more formal governmental and administrative structure. For a copy of the

actual government notice 通知, see: BMA 153-001-01221: 1-3. Also see, Schurmann 1968: 183-185,

where the full list is reproduced. For Schurmann, the order of the list indicated the relative importance of

the organ. I have not found anything to categorically substantiate this.

384

DSJ: 492.

385

See: State Statistics Bureau. Re’ai women de tongji gongzuo 热爱我们的统计工作 (Ardently Love our

Statistical Work). Beijing: China Statistical Press, 1956, 10; and Tongji ganbu de zixue 统计干部的自学

(The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre). Beijing: Statistical Press, 1957.

156

By 1957, the four-fold description of statistical work—collection, collation,

research, and supply—reflected both the de jure and the de facto situation.386

Of these

four, collection, collation and supply were part of the original tasks listed by Wang Sihua

when describing the work of the Northeast Statistics Bureau. Research at that time was

largely aspirational. But by the end of 1957, it had come to occupy a normatively equal

status. In reality, however, statistical workers perceived the importance of these activities

in unequal ways. In 1957, Xue Muqiao noted that some workers preferred performing

supervisory 监督检查 or research 研究分析 tasks over the more basic tasks of collection

and collation, thereby failing to recognize that without these latter tasks the former were

impossible to undertake. 387

As he explained:

If, in order to supervise or [carry out] research, one were to become

relaxed about the collection and collation of statistical work, this was akin

to one destroying the foundations of one’s own work; exactly like the

scholar who having lost his pen takes a sword to a [literary] competition at

a colleague’s home.388

The overemphasis on control was at least partially contingent on the early experience

gained in the Northeast. In 1951, Li Fuchun had observed that statistical work should first

focus on the industrial sector. Later, with additional experience and capabilities, the work

could expand to cover other sectors. The Industrial sector, given its localization in space

386

See for instance, Xue Muqiao’s various speeches from the Sixth National Statistical Meeting, in BMA

133-001-00090: 83.

387

Xue Muqiao 1957: 6. A truncated version of this report is also located in BMA 133-01-00090: 66-80 (第

六屆全國統計工作會議文件 (一)), (it is missing the final two sections in the published version (on 如何

运用各种调查方法（略）and 统计工作的今后任务 (略)). The report was also reproduced in 《统计工

作重要文件彙編—第三輯》, 1959. In similar fashion, collection (here identified as survey 调查) was

described as the basis of all other statistics work in the 1956 introductory textbook People’s Statistics (see p.

9).

388

Xue Muqiao 1957: 6.

157

and its discrete nature (when compared to villages or cooperatives), permitted a focus on

control 监督作用 and vertical leadership 垂直领导.389

In the following chapter, I shall

look more closely at such problems of professionalization and motivation.

Collection

Collection 收集 (the term 搜集 was also frequently used) was the most basic statistical

task performed by the SSB and its subsidiary organs. For Chinese statisticians and their

Soviet advisors, the best way to count was to count exhaustively. As explained in Part I,

Chapter 1, this understanding generated a hierarchy of methods used for data collection.

The most important, because it was the most fundamental, was the Complete

Enumeration Periodical Report System 全面定期统计报表制度. The periodicity of

these reports ranged from ten-day (旬) cycles, to monthly, from quarterly, and annual

reports. Amongst these, the Annual Report was the most important, especially because it

was used most directly in arriving at planning targets and in checking their success and in

summarizing the state of affairs in the economy and in society.390

Reports at shorter

frequencies were more useful at the provincial level and below. Of secondary importance,

but widespread use, were censuses 普查. Finally, unlike the first two methods which

were based on complete enumeration, surveys 调查 which only counted a selected

sample 样本 were also used, but sparingly.391

389

BMA 133-001-00090: 82.

390

Xue Muqiao 1957: 6).

391

For a similar hierarchy of methods, see: People’s Statistics 1956: 9-13

158

Over the course of the 1950s, there was a general trend in the direction of

increasing complexity, both in terms of the nature of data collected, as well as in terms of

the methods used to collect that data. At the start of the 1950s, the emphasis was on

setting up the periodical report system and conducting basic assessments of industry. If

one-time specific sets of data were needed, then the census was the chosen form to do get

such data.392

For example, even before the establishment of the SSB, a census of state-

owned and public-private industries had been carried out in 1950. In 1952, the year the

SSB was established, censuses of industrial production and employment were completed.

A population census in 1953 was followed by censuses of private enterprises and the

handicrafts industry in 1954. Private activity, in particular, was tracked using the census

method. By the mid-1950s several additional censuses were announced with this specific

goal. For instance, an urgent notice issued on October 20 1955 ordered that four types of

surveys were of critical importance and must be completed in the fourth quarter of the

year. These were surveys of Merchants, Private workers in Key Industries, National

Employment, and Material Inventory.393

That same month, another report also issued via

telegraph spoke of the completion rates across provinces and cities of surveys of Private

Businesses and Catering.394

392

Another listing of major censuses 普查 carried out in the 1950s is provided in: Wu Hui 吴辉.

“Zhongguo de tongji diaocha fangshi 中国的统计调查方式 (China’s Statistical Survey Methods).” In

Zhongguo shehui zhuyi tongji gongzuo de jianli yu fazhan 中国社会主义统计工作的建立与发展 (The

Establishment and Development of Socialist Statistical Work in China), edited by the China State Statistical

Bureau’s Institute of Statistical Science, 34-35. Beijing: China Statistical Press, 1985.

393

BMA 002-020-00746: 22-23.

394

BMA 002-020-00746: 16-22. The report observed that the actual completion rates were uneven across

the country. Among those provinces and cities that had more or less completed the surveys were: Beijing,

Tianjin, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Rehe, Shandong, Hunan, and Jiangxi. Another group

was in the midst of carrying the survey out, and included Hebei, Liaoning, Shaanxi, Qinghai, Zhejiang,

Henan, Hubei, Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, and Jiangsu. A smaller set had begun planning work but not

159

The key method for collecting data, however, remained the periodical report

system.395

And by 1956, an integrated statistical system extending down from the SSB in

Beijing allowed for unprecedented levels of penetration. With a staff of about 650

personnel, the SSB, headquartered in Beijing, served as the apex body of this system.

Below it, at the provincial level, statistical offices coordinated work across roughly 2,200

counties. Under the counties were village administrations, which coordinated the

statistical work of about 750,000 village cooperatives. Unlike in the Soviet Union, where

a similar unified chain of command was free from oversight by other party and

government organs, in the People’s Republic a statistical unit at any level was

simultaneously also under the authority of the Party Committee at that level. In other

words, a provincial bureau took its orders not just from the SSB in Beijing, but was also a

constituent part of the provincial People’s Committee, which had a say in its organization.

Thus, the provincial People’s Committee could make its own requests for data to the

provincial statistics bureau. A statistical worker at each level usually had more than one

set of leaders to answer to.396

Such an arrangement it was hoped would make the

statistical system flexible enough to meet local and national needs.397

But it also

generated problems, as the following section will show.

the survey itself: Gansu, Anhui, Fujian, Guizhou, Yunnan, and Shanghai. Xinjiang was the lone region that

had yet to even begin making preparations for the survey.

395

“Among all the various methods of investigation, the complete enumeration periodical report system is

the basic and [most] important method.” [在各种统计调查方式里，全面定期统计报表是基本的主要的

方式] See: Wu Hui 1985: 32.

396

Xue Muqiao 1957: 8.

397

A description of this system can be found in: Xu Qian and Lin Fude 1956: 18-19.

160

Given the goals of extensiveness and completeness (as identified by Wang Sihua),

the management of reports was a major challenge for the SSB. At the Second National

Meeting on Statistical Work in December 1952 the emphasis had been on stressing united

leadership 统一领导, which gave all decision-making authority regarding forms and

schedules to the SSB in Beijing. The result was the proliferation of forms such as Annual

Reports for which the State Statistics Bureau in Beijing was the sole recipient. From the

center’s perspective, this was a world of neatness, simplicity, and legibility. All data

would be collected via exhaustive enumeration at the level of the enterprise and received

via successive rounds of upward reporting and collation as they traveled from the unit 单

位 and county level up to provincial bureau and eventually to the SSB.

State Statistics Bureau (Beijing)

Provincial Bureau Provincial Bureau Provincial Bureau

County Office County Office

County Office

County Office

County Office

County Office

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161

Let us consider the example of “The Basic Annual Report for State-owned, Local

State-owned, and Private-Public Large Scale Industrial Enterprises for the year 1953,”

which encapsulates this idealized vision.398

Below is the summary sheet from the Report.

Several centralizing and comprehensive features, meant to make an industrial enterprise

‘legible’ to the SSB are readily visible: its basic identifying attributes such as ID number

and geographic and administrative location, industry division, key products produced,

total labor input, and gross value of industrial output for 1953 and 1952 at current and

fixed prices. The summary page was followed by 12 additional pages which sought

further details on various activities at the industrial enterprise:

398

BMA 018-011-00054: 80-91. Basic Annual Report for State-owned, Local State-owned, and Private-

Public Large Scale Industrial Enterprises for the year 1953 [一九五三年国营、地方国营及公私合营大型

工业企业基本年报].

162

Page 2: Total Output Value and Commodity Output Value

总产值及商品产值

Page 3: Output (quantity) of Principle Products

主要产品产量

Page 4: Labor and Wages

职工人数及工资

Page 5: Training of new workers and improvement of workers’ techniques

新工人培养及工人技术提高情况

Page 6: Production, Allocation, and Balances of key materials

主要物资的生产、拨出与结存

Page 7: Receipt, Outlay, and Balance of Key Raw Materials (semi-manufactured

goods) and Fuel

主要原材料（半成品）及燃料收拨与结存

Page 8: Consumption of Main Raw Materials (semi-finished goods) and Fuel

最主要原材料（半成品）燃料及电力的消费情况

Page 9: MISSING

Page 10: Power Plant

电力设备

Page 11: Metal Cutting Machine Tools and Forge Equipment

金属切削机床及锻压设备

Page 12: Dedicated Railways and Main Transportation Tools

企业专用铁路及主要运输工具

Page 13: Housing and Educational Welfare Facilities of Workers

企业职工住宅及文教福利设施情况

By collecting Annual Reports from all industrial units in this way, the SSB hoped to

capture the total reality of industrial production in the entire country.

In order to arrive at the neatness of the Annual Report described above, each

industrial enterprise had to track its activities on a far more frequent level (daily, ten-day,

monthly, quarterly) by using a much wider array of reports. Given the goals of

extensiveness and completeness (as described above), the management of reports was

thus a major challenge for the SSB. It soon became clear that the kind of focused

authority called for in December 1952 had led to numerous contradictions between lower

and upper levels within the statistical structure as well as across the same administrative

level. Furthermore, as reported by the Henan Statistics Bureau, enthusiasm often ran high

163

during the first year of work. As a result, demands were too high, too many, too urgent,

and a general impatience 急躁情绪 characterized all work. This situation was reversed

during a national meeting in May 1953. A few years later the national policy of “More,

Better, Quicker, Cheaper” 多、好、快、省 put forward during the 8th

Party Congress in

1956 also generated tensions since statistical work often focused on ensuring “Better”

and “Quicker” at the expense of “More” and “Cheaper”.399

A similar flip-flopping

between simplification and complication was also reported by the Jiangxi Statistics

Bureau. As an example, it cited the case of commercial statistics in the province, which

had gone through four instances of simplification and complication during the five years

between 1953 and 1957.400

It was in the field of agricultural statistics, however, that the SSB would meet its

most intractable foe. For much of the decade, agriculture occupied a secondary,

subsidiary position to industry within the economy. As Carl Riskin has noted, at the

“most general level, the principal themes of the [first five-year] Plan did not include

agricultural production.”401

And yet, it was the surplus generated in agriculture that was

an essential source of investment needed to drive growth in heavy industries. The

efficacy of the periodical reporting system as a means of assessing agricultural output,

and thus the surplus, was however constantly undermined by the scale of the agricultural

sector, the variability of terrain and produce, seasonal differences, and a lack of

399

BMA 133-001-00091: 16.

400

BMA 133-001-00091: 21. In its own report, Henan province observed that the simplification was

successful to varying degrees based on the level of administration. For instance, the simplification at the

county level and above was quite successful. Below the county level, especially at the village level, the

reverse was true. See: BMA 133-001-00091: 11.

401

Riskin 1987: 56.

164

manpower. Take for instance a March 1955 telegram delivered to planning and statistical

bureaus across the nation in which Xue Muqiao bemoaned the quality of the 1954 Annual

Reports for agriculture. Xue observed that when compared with figures from earlier years,

both the yield and area sown showed massive upward and downward fluctuations for

agricultural staples such as grains, cotton, oilseeds, peanuts, and sesame. He concluded

that “such large volatility 波动幅度 in area sown and in the production figures for

various crops amply illustrated that statistical work in agriculture still lacked a solid

foundation and was badly in need of strengthening.”402

Even the use of typical sampling

典型调查, which was meant to supplement the periodical report system, generated

problems since most cadre were unfamiliar with what specific methods to use, how to

select typical cases, and other basic principles.403

Part of the problem lay in a lack of personnel. Unlike in industrial units, many

villages and cooperatives did not possess a dedicated statistician. And even if they did,

this person, in many cases, could only work part-time 兼做. The actual duties of

statistical work often fell to the village clerk 乡文书, whose regular duties became

increasingly onerous as life in the countryside went through successive waves of

cooperativization and eventual collectivization. In this milieu, some clerks even refused

to perform statistical duties, claiming that since it was not formally listed under their

responsibilities it was an ‘additional burden’ 额外负担, which they could or could not

402

BMA 002-020-00746: 9-11.

403

BMA 133-001-00091: 14.

165

perform 可做可不做.404 Already by the mid-1950s, agricultural statistics had thus

become a particular source of embarrassment for the SSB.

Even as a constant battle was fought to standardize and simplify the overall

numbers and types of forms, there was a growing realization that the scope of data

collected had to be expanded. As a report on industrial statistics poignantly noted of the

state of statistical work in1957: “thus [we are] able to reflect production, but [can only

offer] a poor reflection of livelihood.”405

That same year, Xue echoed the report’s

sentiments, stating: “in the past we spent more time thinking about production and

construction statistics, and did not emphasize [enough] surveys of people’s lives.”406

Indeed, already by the end of 1954, this need to better understand changes (and

improvements) in people’s livelihood had precipitated a turn toward systematically

collecting data on rural and industrial family income and expenditure, purchasing power,

wages, population, prices, and much else previously outside the purview of the SSB.407

Exhaustive enumeration, ill-suited to these tasks, had to be augmented by newer, more

sophisticated representative methods. Coupled with the challenges already being faced

due to the re-elevated status of agriculture, where exhaustive enumeration via the

periodical report system had already proven ineffective, 1955 and 1956 thus witnessed a

broader engagement with non-exhaustive forms of counting—in other words, with survey

404

BMA 133-001-00091: 20.

405

“因而能反映生产，不好反映生活” See: BMA 063-007-00088: 5.

406

See: BMA133-0010090: 85.

407

See: BMA 133-001-00091: 13-14, 17 [河南省]. On the 1954 Agricultural Household Survey, see: DSJ:

35.

166

sampling.408

Even so, per the dictum of centralized leadership and dispersed

management, the SSB could only offer regulations and suggestions on how to conduct

work. 409

The actual work had to be carried out by local units at the provincial, city,

county, and village level and be coordinated by various bureaus at each level. 410

A household income survey that the Beijing Statistics Bureau planned to carry out

starting in 1955 reflects these themes of expanded scope, new methods, and

coordination.411

As a clear instance of an attempt to carry out a city-level typical

sampling survey 典型调查, it is indicative of the kind of coordination that was required.

The directive called for the coordination of several different units 单位; the SSB’s role

was one of providing guidelines and not of carrying out all the work, highlighting again

the limits of actual SSB control. In earlier years, smaller-scale surveys exploring some of

these questions had been attempted by individual bureaus. In 1951, the Labour Bureau

had organized about fifty people to survey more than 200 workers families; and in 1952,

the City Finance Committee had organized over 120 people to survey 700 households.

None of these were regular surveys and the surveyors’ lack of experience meant that the

surveys were poorly executed and their data deemed unreliable.

In December 1954, the City Statistics Bureau offered guidelines to the City

Finance Committee concerning setting up a Resident’s Family Livelihood Survey 居民家

408

Xue Muqiao 1957: 1-2; BMA 133-001-00091: 13-14.

409

A 1953 directive had put SSB in charge of all statistical regulations. See: Xue Muqiao 1957: 9.

410

BMA 133-001-00090: 84. For an example of the SSB sending out guidelines for conducting a particular

set of surveys, see: BMA 002-020-00746: 22-23.

411

Starting in 1955, there was a nationwide campaign to collect such data. This was the kind of more

intrusive but also complicated statistical activity that the SSB (and the State) started to conduct during the

first five year plan. See: DSJ: 35.

167

计调查 for 1955.412

The purpose of the survey was four-fold: first, to understand the

material and cultural living standards of the people; second, to organize and plan the

circulation of goods; third, to plan for the circulation of currency; and fourth, to prepare

indices of worker’s cost of living. Regular surveys would thus measure the income and

expenditure (cash and kind) of every level of society, their purchasing power, changes in

the rate of consumption of major commodities, changes in disposable income and in

savings.413

These new types of statistical data were to be collected across all members of

society, who were classed into four groups: workers, independent workers, private

industrial and commercial workers, and peasants and other grassroots people.414

If the survey had already indicated an expansion of the types of data to be

collected, then the method for the survey was also a departure from the exhaustive

enumeration of the periodical report. Typical or purposive sampling 典型调查 was a

method of sampling that relied on the selection and exhaustive surveying of a

representative handful of sample units. In order to ensure that the samples selected were

indeed representative, the guidelines suggested using the method of proportional

412

BMA 004-010-00805: 1-3. In a letter dated December 31 1954, the City Economics and Finance

Committee (财经委员会) agreed with the Beijing Statistics Bureau’s suggestions and began preparations

for setting set up a Resident’s Family Livelihood Account居民家计帐.

413

BMA 004-010-00805: 4-9, “关于建立居民家计账的初步意见;” the rest of the discussion on the

survey draws from this document.

414

The following definitions were used:

Workers: People at various Agencies and Organizations; Cultural & Public Health Organizations; State-

owned enterprises; and at Private Enterprises.

Independent workers: Individual Handicrafts Makers; Cycle-rickshaw drivers; Laborers; and Mental

Workers [white collar].

Private Businesses: Shopkeepers; Peddlers; and other relatively stable industries or those that had already

been flagged as possessing characteristics of state capitalism.

Agricultural Households: Distinguished by whether they were members of a cooperative or not, and by

crop grown (land, cotton, vegetables, etc.).

See: BMA 004-010-00805: 5.

168

sampling. In other words, urban and rural residents were separated into various classes

based on certain characteristics and on income. Once this was done, the relative weight of

each class in the total population was used to establish the numbers from each class

within the sample of typical households in the survey. In concrete terms, this meant the

250 households to be surveyed were divided into four groups: a little over 170 were

classified as workers (Group 1), a little over twenty as independent workers (Group 2),

twenty-five as private businesses (Group 3), and another twenty-five as agricultural

(Group 4).

A general lack of experience with such survey work led to a cautious, staggered

implementation scheme. By January 1 1955 all preparations had to have been completed

for surveying Group 1; the remaining three groups would wait till April 1.415

Furthermore,

different methods were recommended for surveying urban and rural households: urban

families would fill the form with the help of a surveyor, whereas rural families would be

interviewed and the surveyor would himself or herself fill in the form.416

In order to

preserve labor capacity 节省力量, typical households belonging to Group 1 were selected

based on regional distributions; for the remaining three groups, typical households were

selected at the level of the administrative area. For rural surveys, a surveyor was

invariably sent to the household to conduct the survey. The survey was tasked with

collecting data across four parameters: family population and property; sources and

415

If this was felt to be too onerous, then Group 4 could be delayed till July 1.

416

The problem of survey design and the need for trained interviewers is a fairly universal problem. D.K.

Lieu, writing in 1948 had drawn attention to this problem and the possible solutions that had been

employed. See: D.K. Lieu. “Collecting Statistics in China.” The American Statistician 2, no. 6 (December

1948): 12-13.

169

categories of monetary and in-kind income; expenditures (both commodity purchasing

power and non-commodity expenses); and lastly, daily cash savings.

Given its wide ambit, the survey also required additional coordination across

various government bureaus, vertically and horizontally. Ten bureaus were identified and

asked to send personnel to form a central team and a survey team. The central team’s job

was to guide the survey team. It was also supposed to periodically call meetings to

discuss problems, and to coordinate work across bureaus, get help in selecting typical

households, and in propagandizing the survey. The total combined strength of both teams

was 58 persons, with their composition outlined in Table 2 below:

Preparatory work for the survey had to be completed by December 1954 and involved the

preparation of account books, making announcements and spreading information about

the survey, selecting typical households, training surveyors, and so on. Twenty million

yuan 元 were allocated for the survey, and included a special outlay for rewarding

households being surveyed. The instructions noted that based on experience in other

cities, such awards were necessary for the success of the survey.417

417

The 20 million was further divided into the following categories:

Cost of account books: Each book estimate at: 3,000 元; Total 3,000 books;

Total cost: 9 million 元 (900 万元)

Table 3

City Bureau/Unit Central Survey

Planning Committee 1 1

Stats Bureau 1 1

Commerce Bureau 1 12

People’s Bank (Beijing branch) 1 14

Cooperatives 1 12

Grain Bureau 1 3

Labor Bureau 1 2

Federation of Trade Unions 1 1

Women’s Federations 1 1

PSB 1 1

Total 10 48

170

Reconciliation/Correction 整理

By the mid-1950s, collection of statistical data had expanded to include heretofore

neglected subjects and also begun to employ methods that required the development of

capacity and expertise in new areas such as systematized survey sampling. Ensuring the

quality of this data proved to be just as daunting a task as the actual collection itself. At

each annual statistical meeting, reports on measuring quality were shared and discussed,

but the SSB also intermittently approached provincial bureaus in order to obtain a more

real-time sense of the problems of organization and administration in statistical work.418

For instance, a telegram from the Northern Region Statistics Bureau (华北统计局) sent

to the statistics bureaus of Hebei, Shanxi, Suiyuan 绥远, Beijing, and Tianjin in June 1953

sought responses to the following three questions:

1. What kind of data did the bureaus provide to local leaders? How was this data

supplied? (Report not just successful experience but also point out problems and

their possible solutions).

2. What other data do local leaders ask for? What is it [currently] possible to supply?

3. Among data currently being supplied, what kinds are regular/periodic and what

kinds are of a temporary 临时 nature?419

As a result of numerous such inquiries and the debate and discussion they generated, we

can classify problems of quality into three inter-related categories:

Cost of awards/meetings: Per HH/per year: 30,000 元 (三万元); Total HHs: 250

Total cost: 7.5 million 元 (七五 0 万元)

Other office expenses: Included preparatory work: 3.5 million 元 (三五 0 万元)

See: BMA 004-010-00805: 4-9.

418

This was in addition to the reports they received during the annual National Meetings on Statistical

Work, of where there were a total of six: the first in July 1951 and the last in September 1957.

419

See: BMA 002-020-00670: 32. Another telegram asked for provincial and city bureaus to report

problems and their experiences in cleaning up false (illegal) reports. See BMA 002-020-00670: 30. In

similar fashion, a Provision/Regulation 规定 called for the coordination of planning and statistical work.

See: BMA 004-010-00255.

171

1. Over-production/Duplication/Chaotic reporting 滥发报表

2. Reconciling statistical and accounting data 统计、会计不一致

3. Delays

Overproduction/Duplication/Chaotic Reporting

Overproduction and duplication of forms, which were prepared to meet the needs of

various claimants, was a key difficulty faced across all levels of the statistical

administration. A survey of a Glassworks and a Machine Factory carried out in 1957 by

the Nanjing Statistics Bureau offers an illustration of this range and the duplication of

forms and data that resulted. Table 3 shows the results of the survey.420

Table 3. Excess Forms at Two Nanjing Factories

Nanjing Glassworks First Machine Factory

Forms Proportion

% of

total Forms Proportion

% of

total

Total 351 - 100% 242 - 100%

Used within

the Industry 192 100 55% 107 100 44%

Used at the

factory

level 78 40.6 22% 47 43.9 19%

For outside

submission 159 100 45% 135 100 56%

Planning 34 21.4 10% 32 23.7 13%

Financial

Accounts 50 31.4 14% 24 17.8 10%

Statistics 66 41.6 19% 63 46.6 26%

Technical Accounts 9 5.6 3% 16 11.9 7%

At both the Nanjing Glassworks and at the First Machine Factory, not only were too

many reports generated, but they were also generated for several different

destinations/clients—the statistics bureau was only one among many destinations. In each

factory, a sizable number of forms, roughly half (192 out of 351, or 55%, for the

420

In arriving at the count, the same type of form was counted twice if it was used to make monthly and

quarterly reports. The table is a faithful reproduction except for the two ‘% of total’ columns, which have

been added and were not part of the original table produced by the Nanjing Statistics Bureau. See: BMA

133-001-00091: 57-58.

172

Glassworks; 107 out of 242, or 44%, for the Machine Factory) were produced for internal

use. Among these, a further distinction was drawn between those used at the factory/shop

level and those used at the industry/unit 单位 level. The remainder was produced for

outside submission. Among them, those sent to the statistics’ offices accounted for 41.6%

and 46.6% of the total respectively. The corresponding shares out of the total forms for

the statistics bureau thus were 19% (66 out of 351) and 26% (63 out of 242). The share of

forms actually issued by the SSB in Beijing accounted for an even smaller number: 12%

and 14% respectively. 421

As a result, the survey noted, the bulk of the requests

constituted a duplication of data.422

On the basis of such surveys, provincial bureaus

requested that the center clarify and standardize only those reports it needed reporting up

and not try and standardize all reports. The other tables could then be based on local

requirements without having to conform to a national standard.

Attempts at simplification, touched upon in the previous section on collection,

were also often ineffective. One 1957 survey of three bureaus—Education, Transport,

and Public Health—in Jiangxi observed that two out of the three had failed to simplify

and had on the contrary increased their output of forms. In another survey, it was found

that twenty-two offices and organs spread across eight industrial enterprises produced

421

More numerical and textual examples in: Si Gengsheng 司更生. “Fanlan chengzai de diaocha tongji

biao 泛滥成灾的调查统计表 (Swamped by Statistical Tables).” RMRB, September 12 1953, 3.

422

That the SSB was particularly mindful of this duplication of data is evident from the interview of a

statistical worker from a county-level Industrial and Mining Bureau who Li Choh-Ming interviewed in

August 1961. Sometimes such duplicate data was based on genuine need. At other times, Li reported Wang

commenting “that some agencies liked to obtain all types of information regardless of whether the

information would be of use to them or not.” Li also noted in his report that “Without prior permission

from the bureau, other government agencies and offices were not allowed to send investigators to the

factories and mines under the bureau’s control for the purpose of collecting statistical information.” See Li

Choh-Ming. ““Statistics and Planning at the Hsien Level in Communist China.” The China Quarterly, No.

9 (Jan. – Mar., 1962b): 112-123. (quoted text is from p. 119). Li also described a system of introductory

letters that the bureau issued to other agencies when they required data.

173

477 types of forms and 25,771 indicators for outside submission. Many of these forms

were extremely complicated 繁杂 and some were also duplications of each other.423

Made repeatedly clear through such surveys was the point that what was of relevance to

local agencies was not necessarily of relevance to the center.424

The picture on the ground thus looked quite different from that envisioned by the

SSB in Beijing. Every administrative level complained of a flood of papers and numbers,

and little capacity to make any sense of them. Excess issuing 滥发 and chaotic issuing 乱

发 were the terms frequently used to describe such a state of affairs. The SSB tried to

tackle this problem in September 1953 by going public, as it were. Prior to that,

discussions about excess issuing and duplication had circulated internally via memos,

telegrams, and reports. But on September 7 the People’s Daily published two directives

that addressed the issue head-on.425

The first of these, “Instructions regarding the

cleaning-up of existing statistical survey forms and [concerning] the cessation of their

reckless issuing,” was issued by the State Administrative Council (SAC) and carried the

authorial imprimatur of Zhou Enlai himself. The second was an SSB document that had

been vetted by the SAC, titled “Temporary Methods to formulate and approve statistical

forms.”426

In addition, the People’s Daily also published an editorial on September 7

423

BMA 133-001-00091: 27.

424

See for instance: BMA 133-001-00091: 9. Also see: Si Gengsheng 1953: 3. Si provides an exposition of

the kind of detailed data collected by local bureaus.

425

See for instance, BMA 133-001-00091; BMA 008-011-00054; BMA 002-020-00670: 28, 30-32; BMA

002-005-00088; and BMA 133-001-00043. Also see: DSJ: 23 (Item 59) and Xue Muqiao 1957: 18.

426

RMRB 7 September 1953, 1, 2. Both documents were actually released 发布 on September 5. See: BMA

123-001-00416: 47.

174

1953 titled “Wipe out chaotic phenomena from statistical survey work.”427

These three

documents together served as a rallying cry for reducing duplication and mitigating chaos.

As a Beijing Statistics Bureau notice 通知 from a couple of weeks later declared:

These three documents are extremely important for current statistical work,

[and it is] hoped that statistical bureaus and offices at all levels will

organize study sessions for all statistical cadre, [so that the instructions]

may be earnestly put into practice.428

In this manner, solutions continued to be sought so that a gradual decrease in excess and

chaotic issuing could effected.429

In some instances, such as instructions for statistical

work for the year 1954, documents even contained claims that the “serious problem of

excess reports had by and large been conquered.”430

And yet, by 1956, hardly any long-

term improvement had occurred. On the contrary, as the SSB expanded data collection

into new areas, the People’s Daily could only bemoan that their still excessive numbers,

complicated content, constant emendations, and urgency, all meant that it was finally

“time to reduce statistical reports.”431

Indeed, things were so serious that internal

memoranda from a year later deemed reports useless as soon as they were produced 随发

427

RMRB, 7 September 1953, 2. Another article, published five days later on September 12, provided

numerous examples from across the provinces and from various sectors of the economy to bolster the claim

of “too many, too complicated, [and] too chaotic.” Si Gengsheng 1953: 3.

428

BMA 123-001-00416: 47.

429

BMA 133-001-00091: 11.

430

BMA 004-010-00807: 29.

431

Jiang Ling 江陵. “Zhonglei duo, xiangmu fan, biangeng duo, yaoqiu ji shi jianshao tongji baobiao de

shouhou le 种类多、项目繁、变更多、要求急 是减少统计报表的售后了.” RMRB 25 October 1956 , 4.

175

随废.432

Unless action was taken, such an unchecked spread would, it was felt, lead to

unmitigated disaster 泛滥成灾.433

The possibility of unmitigated disasters was very much on Xue Muqiao’s mind in

September 1957 when he observed that the problem of excess issuing remained

unresolved. Given the demanding nature of exhaustive counting (investigations) 全面调

查化, he insisted that only the SSB should issue demands for periodical reports. If other

levels of the statistical system needed their own data, they should resort to one-time

surveys, typical surveys, or annual reports, and not monthly or quarterly reports.434

According to him, three principal reasons were behind the problem: micro-management,

the twin tendencies of subjectivism 主观主义 and bureaucratism 官僚主义, and not

enough oversight by the statistical organs. Looking ahead to the second five-year plan he

exhorted the Planning Bureau, the Finance Bureau, and the Statistics Bureau to join

together and combat the problem in one go.435

Reconciling Data 核对、整理

A second major problem was the presence of wildly disparate numbers for putatively the

same observation or activity. The need to have reconciled data was particularly important

in a fast expanding economy undergoing comprehensive nationalization, since terms and

432

BMA 133-001-00091: 10

433

BMA 133-001-00091: 30.

434

Xue Muqiao 1957: 9.

435

Xue Muqiao 1957: 18-19. Resorting to such sloganized reasons was of course hardly new and can be

traced to the early 1950s and the campaigns against bureaucratism. Also, Mao’s “Wu duo 五多” essay

raised similar concerns. See: Mao Zedong. “Jiejue wuduo wenti 解决‘五多’问题.” In Mao Tse-Tung.

Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung—Vol. V. Beijing: People’s Press, 1977, 77-79 (p. 89-81 in English

edition).

176

categories were constantly in a state of flux. Wang Sihua had touted standardization as

one of socialist statistics’ key characteristics, but that ideal too needed to be reconciled

with the reality on the ground.

One reason for different numbers can be traced to confusion over what exactly

was being measured. In 1953, for instance, a Beijing Statistics Bureau bulletin 通报 (sent

to all industrial units in Beijing, and copied to various central government organs)

required that all entries for the Annual Report as well as for monthly periodic reports be

made according to the Catalog of Industrial Products 工业产品目录. This would help

avoid the problem of leaky reporting 漏报, which was defined as consisting of not

reporting goods produced for internal consumption or goods that factories considered

unimportant. Similarly, sometimes there was confusion over units of measurement:

should one report tons 吨 or bags 袋?436

Even four years later, ensuring that production

was reported according to the Catalog of Industrial Products remained a challenge.437

But the challenges of standardization also reflected a more deep-rooted and

systemic problem. In the earlier section on overproduction we have already seen that data

was collected by numerous agencies. In order to ensure data was properly reconciled,

two systems of reporting were used: the single track 单轨制 and the double track 双轨制.

The former system was used for data in fields where already a high level of

professionalization existed, such as rail and air transportation, postal services, education,

and public health. The business offices of these services were expected to directly report

436

BMA 008-011-00054: 41-42.

437

BMA 063-001-00088: 5. By this time, the catalog consisted of about 230 items: over 180 intermediate

goods and over 40 consumer goods.

177

statistical data to statistical bureaus at the same level and also to make reports to their

own higher levels.438

In contrast, the dual track system was used for the more important

and much larger types of data, such as those relating to industrial and agricultural

production, fixed capital investment, retail sales, and labor and wages. According to this

system (see chart below) statistical and business data were collected independently; the

former being reported through the statistical apparatus and the latter through the

particular ministry concerned. The two sets of data thus produced were then compared to

check the overall quality of data, the normative expectation being that the data would be

the same.439

438

Wu Hui 1985: 32.

439

Original schematic chart in: Wu Hui 1985: 33.

State Statistics Bureau

国家统计局

Ministry

主管部

County Business Office 县业务主管局

County Statistics Bureau 先统计局

Provincial (Self-

administered region, city)

Statistics Bureau 省(自治区, 直辖市) 统计局

Provincial (Self-administered region, city)

Business Office 省(自治区, 直辖市) 业务厅

Grass-roots Unit

基层单位

178

In practice, however, because of varying conditions of work and administration,

the procedures of data collection were rarely standardized. The natural result was

inconsistent data. In matter of fact, in most cases a third source of data also existed: the

finance bureau also collected accounting data.440

But instead of solving the problem, this

merely exacerbated inconsistencies across three sets of numbers. In other words,

inconsistencies across statistics, accounting, and business reporting constantly brought

into question the quality and reliability of all data being reported. The archives abound

with bulletins, regulations, suggestions, and instructions that all attempt to grapple with

this problem.441

Many of these discussions stressed the generally superior reliability of

statistical data, observing that accounting or business reporting was relatively vague

because it was prone to variations on account of local conditions and local practices.442

Yet others held the exact opposite view, asking not just for the abolishment of the dual

track system but also for the removal of local level statistical units and a sole reliance on

business/industry reports.443

The problem was severe enough that on June 20 1956 the

SSB and the Ministry of Finance jointly released “Common Responses to questions about

440

Dual-tracking to control for quality of data was likely used in other settings as well. For instance, a

related dual-track system was used at the Beijing Pharmaceutical Company 北京医药公司 in 1956. The

two tracks in this case were the statistical and the fiscal (accounting). Receipts 发票 was recorded and then

passed on by the business clerk 业务员 to the statistics division 统计部门 and to the accounting division

会计部门. The statistics division then prepared an original voucher 原始凭证 while their accounting

counterpart prepared a goods account 商品账. Each of these datum was then reconciled against the other on

a daily, 10-day, and monthly cycle 统会双方按日旬月核对数字. See: BMA 35-2-203: 35. Another

example (with chart) for Public-Private Commercial Enterprises, Catering Services 饮食业, etc., can be

found in: BMA 133-001-00008: 67.

441

See, for instance: BMA 119-001-00118: 76-80; 133-001-00065; 004-010-00255; 004-016-00268; 133-

001-0091:32); and 004-010-00618.

442

See for instance, BMA 133-001-00065: 20.

443

For instance, BMA 0133-001-00091: 24.

179

inconsistencies in accounting and statistics,” which it was hoped would provide

guidelines to begin addressing the problem.444

Delays

Excess issuing, duplication, and the need to reconcile data all also contributed to another

chronic problem: delays. A case in point is the 1954 Agricultural Production Annual

Report. In order for the national version of this report to have been prepared in a timely

manner, provincial reports, themselves compiled on the basis of periodical reports, should

have been received by the end of January. But as late as 22February, only sixteen out of

twenty-nine provinces and cities had submitted their reports.445

In similar fashion a 1955

notice from Xue Muqiao requested that all provincial and city level bureaus undertake

reconciling work in a timely manner, observing that only a handful of provinces had

actually begun such work, with most others lagging behind.446

Unclear procedures and confused systems of measurement also contributed to

delays. For example, when reporting Commercial Statistics, the SSB regulations called

for all forms to be filed thirty days after the end of the quarter. But the Commerce

Bureau’s regulations called for the reporting to be done within twenty-six days. And the

Finance Bureau, in turn, demanded them within forty-five days (though in reality it took

sixty days).447

Such multiple deadlines did little to ensure the timeliness for any of the

bureaus concerned.

444

DSJ: 46-47.

445

BMA 002-020-00746: 9.

446

BMA 002-020-00746: 24.

447

BMA 133-001-00091: 18-19.

180

Much as in collection, the agricultural sector again offered the greatest challenge

for the reconciliation of data. We have already noted agriculture’s secondary position

within the economy for much of the 1950s. In 1953 Mao had observed:

In the present transition period we cannot introduce unified and planned

production in agriculture, except on the state farms, and interfere too much

with the peasants. We can only guide agricultural production and co-

ordinate it with industrial production by our pricing policy and necessary

and practicable economic and political work so that it can be integrated

into the national economic plan.448

It was as a result of such views, which acknowledged that agricultural sector could not be

administered with the same degree of control as other parts of the economy, that some

proposed making the county level planning and statistics office the main unit for

reporting agricultural data. The reason behind such a suggestion lay in recognizing that it

was the county level at which local conditions and requirements became particular

enough to warrant local control.449

An even more drastic scheme suggested transferring

the responsibility of agricultural statistical work to the Agriculture Bureau.450

But this

was tempered by other less radical points of view, which recommended that the SSB and

the Agriculture Bureau work together and reach a consensus on methods, requirements,

and management.451

448

Mao Zedong 1977 (English edition): 91.

449

BMA 133-001-00091: 2.

450

BMA 133-001-00091: 45-46.

451

BMA 133-001-00091: 70-71, 75.

181

Solutions

By 1957, different solutions were offered for each of the different levels of government:

provincial, city, county, and village. At the Province Level it was felt that neither a

system that granted too much centralized control to the province nor one which let

authority devolve entirely down to the various departments was appropriate.452

The

problem at the provincial levels included limited manpower and an unfamiliarity with the

work of the various departments, which resulted in much ado for very little result 忙乱尽

缓 and could not help mitigate the chaotic issuing of reports 乱发报表. If, on the other

hand, authority to issue and manage reports was distributed to individual departments,

then on account of their numbers and variety, a chaotic situation 混乱现象 was also

unavoidable. The solution, as proposed by the Henan Statistics Bureau, was for the SSB

and the various departments to issue a common set of periodical forms, which had to be

used by everyone.453

At the City and Special 专 Administrative level, it was felt that forms should only

be issued after all city-level statistical departments had come to an agreement. This meant

granting significant autonomy to city level statistics bureaus. The logic to doing this lay

in the fact that many city level governments were close to and familiar with local

conditions and hence had a better sense of the ground realities. Therefore, if their

expertise and experience was not brought into play, chaotic issuing 乱发报表 of reports

could easily result. At the same time, if certain departments had a strong foundation in

452

This was, of course not the only opinion. In a federalist move, some called for greater power for the

provinces, while others argued for increased centralization. See BMA 133-001-00091: 34, 41, and

26-27. For other solutions, see: BMA 133-001-00091: 55-56 (Nanjing); 58-61 (simplification).

453

BMA 133-001-00091: 9.

182

statistical work, then they could be permitted to issue reports themselves, as long as

periodic checks were still performed.454

At the County Level, one-time reports/surveys usually outnumbered periodic

reports. Since county offices were frequently far from the provincial office, they

exercised greater freedom and could respond more freely to short-term requirements for

data, issuing new forms per need 随用随发. This reality, and the fact that time was

always in short supply, meant that most forms reported from the county level up to the

province level could not be approved. One solution proposed was to give the authority to

approve one-time survey results to the county office, and require that only periodic

reports be submitted for approval to the provincial office. As for the village level, most

provinces felt that statistical work at this level was poorly administered. Villages were

too many and tables and reports were generated in an erratic fashion. Frequently, most

reports were useless the moment they were produced 随发随废. The majority did not

have a shelf life of more than one day and rarely made it to the County Level for approval.

Accordingly, even as late as 1957, the pressing need was to better oversee village level

statistical work by introducing a simplified periodical reporting system and do away with

the chaotic collection and issuing of reports. 455

By the mid-1950s, proposal such as these had led Xue Muqiao to promote the

general policy of centralized leadership but dispersed management 统一领导，分级管理.

454

BMA 133-001-00091: 10.

455

BMA 133-001-00091: 10.

183

Research

In his report at the Sixth Annual Meeting of Statistical Work in Beijing in September

1957, Xue Muqiao had explained that the people’s economy was extremely complicated,

and the result of the intertwining of a variety of intricate factors. It was the task of

statistics and the statistician to explain and simplify this extremely complicated world by

providing sound research and analysis of statistical data. Research, thus, was the third

major service that statistics had to perform. The most important element of such research

and analysis was the production of statistical indicators. As Xue noted:

When conducting investigations 调查, in order to make calculations easier

we must simplify complicated phenomena by converting them into

abstract [but easier to understand] statistical indicators.456

The calculation of indicators lay at the heart of most of kinds of analysis, ranging from

studies of comprehensively balancing various sectors of the economy, to calculating the

relations between different factors , to increasing savings and measuring the successful

implementation of plans.457

In general, though, such work had been neglected because the

primary emphasis had been on establishing the basic framework for collecting and

collating data.458

As the Anhui Statistics Bureau observed in 1957:

Over the past few years, our work in this area [analysis] is extremely

inadequate. Our statistics bureau has done a much better job than other

bureaus of mastering [the collection of] abundant data, but we have not

put this data to good use.459

456

Xue Muqiao 1957: 7.

457

See for instance, BMA 133-001-00091: 12, 35-36.

458

BMA 133-001-00091: 52.

459

BMA 133-001-00091: 35.

184

One reason for this was that given the overwhelmingly large numbers and types of forms

and tables, most bureaus had no time for analysis.460

Until about 1955, most research and analysis was left to the SSB in Beijing, to

whom provincial and lower level bureaus supplied Annual Reports. The SSB, in turn,

collated and analyzed the data to produce annual bulletins 公报 that summarized

economic growth and progress in plan implementation. These bulletins sought to achieve

as comprehensive a picture of the economy as possible and included information in

absolute and relative terms about changes in industry, agriculture, livestock,

infrastructure, transportation, communication, investment, commerce and trade, prices,

labor, education, publications, and public health.461

By the mid-1950s two additional developments had taken place that expanded the

capacity to carry out research and analysis. The first of these was the establishment of a

small scale computing facility at SSB headquarters. This foray into mechanized counting

permitted the SSB to collectively summarize data from annual reports and censuses.462

By 1957, Xue Muqiao was able to encourage those provinces where statistical work was

particularly onerous to also begin considering the gradual mechanization of their

460

As observed by the Henan Statistics Bureau. BMA 133-001-00091: 12

461

See for instance:

1953: 《关于一九五三年度国民经济发展和国家计划执行结果的公报》;

1954: 《关于一九五四年度国民经济发展和国家计划 执行结果的公报》;

1956: 《关于 1956 年度国民经济计划执行结果的公报》;

1953-57: 《关于发展国民经济的第一个五年 (1953 年到 1957 年) 计划执行结果的公报》; and

1958: 《 国家统计局关于 1958 年国民经济发展情况的公报》

All published by the Statistical Press.

462

In 1958, the SSB published a book on calculating machines: State Statistical Bureau. Jisuanji de

susuanfa 计算机的速算法 (The Methods of Rapid Calculations using Calculating Machines). Beijing:

Statistical Press, 1958.

185

calculation work.463

The mid-1950s also witnessed the creation of dedicated research

sections within provincial and city level bureaus. I have already discussed the household

livelihood survey, something which these new research sections became responsible for.

Now let us look at another example of the type of research that began to done by more

local level units.

In 1956, the Beijing Statistics Bureau began producing and circulating statistical

analysis briefings 統計分析簡報.464

Each issue was a few pages long and offered basic

analysis of recent trends for a particular sector of the economy. In all, these briefings

were organized under eight categories: summary, capital construction, commerce,

industry, agriculture, communications (including transportation), [consumer] goods, and

labor. Topics ranged from tracking agricultural production and urban incomes, forecasts

of plan completion in various bureaus during the first quarter of 1956, construction work

completed during the first half of 1956, the arrival of capital construction equipment for

local industries during the first half of 1956, the result of attempts to reduce costs, the

ahead-of-time attainment of targets for the sale of retail goods, etc. On the whole, the

analysis drew upon actual figures and simple indicators of growth, along the lines of what

was discussed in Part I Chapter III.

Each briefing was sent to two sets of recipients. The primary recipients included

various city level leaders and related offices, such as the city committee and its general

office, and the city planning commission. The reports were also sent to the director of the

463

Xue Muqiao 1957: 7. In interviews, Renmin University professor Ni Jiaxun 倪加勋 recalled using the

abacus for all calculations during the early 1950s when he was part of a county level statistical unit.

464

See: BMA 004-010-00253. ( 北京市统计局统计分析简报) The first briefing in this folder is dated

April 4 1956 and the last appears to be from October 1956. Altogether there appear to be about fifty

bulletins spread across 145 pages.

186

SSB and to the various relevant departments at the SSB. So, for example, the industry

and capital construction briefings were sent to the industrial statistic department , the

agriculture briefing was sent to the agriculture statistics department, and the commerce

briefing was sent to the department of trade statistics. The second set of recipients

consisted of those that the briefings were copied to. Here we see a far wider set of

agencies, including various ministry level bureaus. Four among them received copies of

every kind of briefing, regardless of the category; they were the Bureau of Finance, the

Bureau of Taxation, the Beijing branch of the People’s Bank, and the Supervision Bureau.

By the mid-1950s, there was thus a fairly robust network of agencies sharing interim

statistical research on the performance of the economy.

Supply

Supplying data was the last of the four principal duties that SSB and the statistical

apparatus were tasked with. While the annual bulletins 公报 noted in the previous section

were the most visible examples of the SSB’s work, they were not what comprised the

bulk of the data that Xue Muqiao had in mind when he put forward his four-part

categorization of SSB activities. Indeed, the bulk of the data and research that the SSB

supplied was intended not for the public but only for designated governmental agencies

and the leadership at various levels. Many of the reports and briefings cited in this

chapter (the reports 报告, the bulletins 简报, analysis 分析 such as various indicators 指

187

标) often carried the stamp “internal issue; not for publication” 内部发行、不得对外发

表.465

It was the supply of this kind of data, which was spoken of as absolutely critical

for the planning process that was the final and most important output of the statistical

system. And yet, according to Xue Muqiao its fundamental importance was ignored in

favor of more frivolous pursuits. In 1957 he noted that “in the past there were some

comrades who underestimated the glorious task of supplying data. [Instead] they

particularly emphasized the ‘supervisory role’ and ‘vertical integration’ of statistics.”

Xue explained that these cadres went to unreasonable lengths to focus only on the

supervisory role of statistics. For Xue this was a gross error, especially when overall

statistical capacity still remained rudimentary, when the SSB still struggled to produce

reliable data in a timely fashion.466

In the previous three sections we have already seen some of the problems that

plagued the accurate and timely supply of data. As we have seen, data was supplied at

various levels: frequently between bureaus, to various central agencies, and eventually

reported up 上报 to the SSB headquarters in Beijing.467

But the question of who used

what kind of data remained: the center often only wanted annual data, but at provincial

and local level, monthly and quarterly data were usually more important.468

The result

465

See, for instance: BMA 133-001-00090: 81. Other formulations included: “internal document, outside

transmission not permitted” 内部文件，不得外传; see: BMA 004-010-00807:16 .

466

BMA 133-001-00090: 82.

467

See, for instance: BMA 002-020-00670: 12.

468

Xue Muqiao 1957: 9.

188

was to stimulate duplication and chaotic issuing and the competing deadlines also

brought about severe delays.469

Conclusion

In the end, for all the valorization of an extensive, complete, and objective statistical

system, Xue Muqiao admitted that in certain important situations, the timeliness of the

data outranked their accuracy.

Even though statistical data should possess a high degree of accuracy, it is

not necessary that all data must be highly accurate [all the time]. In order

for the leading authorities 领导机关 to understand the situation, research

questions, and decide on policies, they frequently needed reference data on

a timelier basis. Such data need not possess a high degree of accuracy or

be comprehensive, but it must be supplied in a timely fashion.470

Implicit in this statement was the admission that in most cases data produced was neither

timely nor accurate. The archival materials that comprise the principal source base for

this chapter suggest why such a bleak picture of statistical work during the 1950s is

justified. While they demonstrate a tremendous degree of engagement and

professionalization, they also clearly highlight how much a struggle it was to make

manifest an idealized system centered on exhaustive enumeration via a periodical report

system.

This was not, however, the way statistical work was presented in more public

materials. To promote the work they were doing and to keep morale high, the SSB

published a whole range of books and pamphlets that sought to share positive experiences.

469

See, for example: BMA 35-2-203: 21-27.

470

The statement was made during his main address at the sixth annual meeting of statistical work in

Beijing in September 1957. See: Xue Muqiao 1957: 13; 10.

189

Usually composed of essays written by cadre at different local, regional, and provincial

statistical offices, these works had titles such as “Compilation of Experiences of

Grassroots Agricultural Statistics Work,” “Our Country’s Experience in Industrial

Statistics Work,” and “How To Do Analysis of Industrial Statistics.”471

Even though such

works extolled the successful experience of selected cadre and statistical offices, read

against the grain they only serve to further sharpen the sense we already have of a system

bogged down by the weight of its own expectations. At the same time, they also highlight

the fact that statistical activity was as much about capacity building as it was about

claiming legitimacy; that is, creating the appearance of capacity and ensuring that the

Communist revolution was seen to be a success. This is precisely what the Annual

Bulletins cited above sought to achieve. The 1959 publication of Ten Great Years 《伟大

的十年》 was perhaps the ultimate legitimizing weapon in this regard.

A critical element of both capacity building and claiming legitimacy was training

adequate numbers of statistical cadre.472

Given the challenges to statistical work

described here, this was a far from straightforward task. It is to that topic that we shall

turn to next.

471

See, for instance: State Statistics Bureau. Jiceng nongye tongji gongzuo jingyan huibian 基层农业统计

工作经验汇编 (Compilation of Experiences Conducing Grassroots Agricultural Statistics Work). Beijing:

China Statistical Press, 1956; State Statistics Bureau. Woguo gongye tongji gongzuo de jingyan 我国工业

统计工作的经验(The Experience of Industrial Statistical Work in our Country). Beijing: China Statistical

Press, 1958; State Statistics Bureau. Zenyang zuo gongye tongji fenxi gongzuo 怎样做工业统计分析工作

(How to Carry out Analysis of Industrial Statistics). Beijing: China Statistical Press, 1956.

472

Xue Muqiao 1957: 5.

190

CHAPTER VI

To “Ardently Love Statistical Work”: State (In) capacity,

Professionalization, and their Discontents

191

Comrade Li Ming Dismisses Statistics

In July 1955, the Tongji gongzuo tongxun (统计工作通讯 Statistical Work Bulletin), the

principal journal of statistical work in the People’s Republic, published a short letter from

a youthful statistical worker.473

Just twenty years old, Li Ming noted that he had already

been engaged in statistical work for three years. Prior to beginning work he had received

a year and a half of statistical training at a Statistics and Accounting Vocational School

专科学校. When he began work, Li told the editors of the journal, he was full of

enthusiasm. He hoped to wholeheartedly devote all his abilities to statistical work and

thereby serve the people. To that end, he spent an additional three months during the

latter half of 1954 at the Central Fuel Industry Ministry’s Cadre School中央燃料工业部

干部学校, supplementing his training. Such training and experience should have led him

to achieve success at work. And yet, he lamented that the reality was not so. Quite to the

contrary, Li Ming discovered that the more he worked the more he lost faith in statistics

and the less he knew where the future career prospects of statistical workers lay. Having

already worked for three years, he could not deny that he had a basic grasp of statistical

work, but was this not merely the addition and subtraction of numbers or the calculation

of percentages 加加减减，算算百分数? After all, he did not directly participate in

production work and, as such, was reliant on the information provided by others. Even if

he visited the factory floor, there was much about the production process he did not know

or understand. Such ignorance about the production process meant that the blind

application of statistical methods and tools was not in the least bit useful and rather a

473

Li Ming. “Comrade Li Ming’s Letter.” Tongji gongzuo tongxun, 1955 No. 7, pp. 42. Republished in:

State Statistics Bureau. Re’ai women de tongji gongzuo 热爱我们的统计工作 (Ardently Love our

Statistical Work). Beijing: China Statistical Press, 1956, 8-9. Herafter RWTG.

192

waste of time 一无所用, 白费时间. So were born his doubts regarding the usefulness of

statistical work; doubts so acute that he had reached a point where he was unwilling to do

any work.

Statistics’ perceived worthlessness made unambiguous and his own lack of desire

powerfully expressed, Li Ming proceeded to note that his frustration was all the greater

given his youth. The better part of his life lay ahead of him and he still yearned to make a

practical and real contribution 实际的贡献 to the motherland. Statistical work, clearly,

did not qualify. And so, he found himself in a dilemma. On the one hand he found

himself increasingly unwilling to participate in statistical work; on the other, he could not

but recognize the resources the nation had already devoted to his training in statistics.

How could he now let the nation down by seeking other work? Caught between the

Scylla of patriotic desire and the Charybdis of patriotic duty, Li Ming implored the

editors of the journal to help him find a solution.

In publishing Li Ming’s letter, a solution is precisely what the editorial team at the

journal hoped to unearth. In a short preface to the letter, they explained that the kinds of

doubts and general attitudinal problems that Li Ming wrote about were present in a not

insignificant number of statistical workers.474

Accordingly, they invited readers to

respond with their reactions and suggestions. So was begun a national debate on

statistical work. Responses were published over the following several months. The

discussion was eventually brought to an end in the December issue of the journal. That

issue included a brief overview of the letters that remained unpublished, as well as an

474

For instance, according to a survey carried out in 1954, of the thirty-seven statistical workers in a

petroleum factory in the city of Fushun (抚顺), 40% did not pay attention to their work. In another example,

statements delivered at the statistical meeting of the Kaifeng (Henan province) group noted that as many as

60% of the workers neglected statistical work. RWTG: 1.

193

essay summarizing the discussion since July and its lessons, written by Jia Qiyun 贾启云,

one of the deputy directors of the State Statistics Bureau. The following year, the State

Statistics Bureau (SSB) compiled what it deemed were the best responses into a small

booklet for wider dissemination. To those responses they added introductory and

summary essays that provided additional didactic content regarding the value and

revolutionary nature of statistical work. For the booklet’s title they appropriated the title

of Deputy Director Jia’s December article: “Ardently Love our Statistical Work” 热爱我

们的统计工作. Published in August 1956, the booklet had a publication run of 5,500 odd

copies.

It is more than likely Li Ming did not exist. He was probably a composite

character created to embody the real concerns and problems confronting Chinese

planners and statisticians.475

Indeed, the putative Li Ming and the campaign his letter

instigated lay bare a crucial anxiety through much of the early PRC—the creation and

maintenance of the ideal (statistical) worker. Several forces, each pulling in a different

direction, made this an especially challenging task. While some of these forces were a

part of the general problem of bureaucratization following revolution, and have been

addressed in earlier scholarship476

, many others were specific to the nature of statistical

475

Such practice is well known in PRC history. The most notorious example is, of course, Lei Feng. Lei

Feng, a young People’s Liberation Army soldier, was at the center of a 1963 PLA orchestrated under the

leadership of Lin Biao that sought to “emphasize the basic values of service to the party.” As explained by

Jonathan Spence: “the posthumously discovered Diary of Lei Feng emphasized again and again the

soldier’s undying love for the revolution, for his country, and for his comrades, as well as his unswerving

devotion to Chairman Mao. The fact that the “diary” was fictitious, concocted by the PLA propaganda

writers, should not conceal its basic significance, which was to launch an attack against the lack of

revolutionary fervor displayed by many intellectuals and writers in the People’s Republic.” See: Jonathan D.

Spence. The Search for Modern China. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1990, 597.

476

See, for instance: Hong Yung Lee. From Revolutionary Cadres to Party Technocrats in Socialist China.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991; Leo A. Orleans. Professional Manpower and Education in

Communist China. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961; Franz Schurmann. Ideology

194

work, and to statistics’ role in the economy and what it ‘produced.’ It is the notable lack

of reverence for the power and positivism of numbers in Li Ming that sets up the basic

contradiction. In Part I we saw that the early 50s were a time when a new theoretical and

methodological paradigm for statistics and statistical work was established in the PRC.

But what was one to do when the common worker refused to even acknowledge the

transformative power and potential of statistics, far less any putative resolutions to

definitional and methodological distinctions? Indeed, on the ground, the concerns were

far more basic: the creation of a professional cadre and attendant infrastructure, ensuring

adequate number of such cadre, and maintaining their morale; all while keeping in mind

the central and fundamental role that statistics and statistical workers were supposed to

play in the economy. It is with almost metonymic, and perhaps entirely predictable,

precision that Li Ming’s mini-biography and complaints mirror these concerns.

This chapter, then, is about the state’s attempts to build statistical capacity.

Alternatively, it is about how the state dealt with incapacity. My thinking about capacity

draws upon Michael Mann’s formulation of infrastructural power. In his seminal 1984

essay he characterized infrastructural power, in contra-distinction to despotic power, as

“the capacity of the state actually to penetrate civil society, and to implement logistically

political decisions throughout the realm.”477

Statistics is a powerful example of

and Organization in Communist China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968; and Ezra Vogel.

“From Revolutionary to Semi-Bureaucrat: The “Regularisation” of Cadres.” The China Quarterly, no. 29

(Jan. – Mar. 1967): 36-60.

477

Mann focused his discussion primarily on capitalist countries, observing that such infrastructural power

may have begun by bolstering despotism, but was eventually also used by actors outside the state, including

civil society members and powerful capitalist corporations. My interest in this chapter is not to investigate

the checks to power that these processes might generate. Regardless of the system of governance, the

category of infrastructural capacity has great purchase for 1950s China (and indeed much of earlier Chinese

history as well). See: Michael Mann. “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and

Results.” European Journal of Sociology 25, no. 2, (November 1984): 185-213.

195

infrastructural power. Such power, Mann argued, was a characteristic of modern

industrial societies. Accordingly, in this chapter I investigate how the PRC state went

about establishing infrastructural power in the realm of statistics, something that the

Republican state arguably lacked, and suffered on account of. In a much more recent

working paper Francis Fukuyama, building on Mann’s ideas, has stressed the need to

better understand such capacity as part of a larger definition of governance, regardless of

the nature of the government in power.478

According to him, one key marker of this

capacity is the level of education and professionalization among government officials.479

Thus, if the previous chapter focused on the nature of statistical work, this chapter shifts

the spotlight to the creation and maintenance of a cadre capable of doing that work. Our

opening story, the ensuing national debate in the TJGZTX, and the eventual publication of

RWTG, all hint at how massively challenging this task was.

A variety of stratagems—training, supplementary training, self-study, motivation,

and reward—were employed to tackle these challenges. They began with training in

preparation for employment and, in theory, were continually mobilized throughout one’s

career. The chapter traces this training and motivation work, using Li Ming as a foil

wherever possible. Beginning with his claims of youthfulness and education, the chapter

first explores the kinds of statistical training offered by the state. For a select few, such

training may have been available at the university level, but the vast majority was trained

in technical schools through training courses 训练班. But even this was inadequate and

478

Francis Fukuyama. “What is Governance?” Center for Global Development, Working Paper 314,

January 2013, 3. In his introduction, Fukuyama notes about the field of political science and policy studies:

“everyone is interested in studying political institutions that limit or check power—democratic

accountability and rule of law—but very few people pay attention to the institution that accumulates and

uses power, the state.”

479

Fukuyama 2013: 7.

196

by the middle of the decade the SSB observed that it was unable to train enough

statisticians through such means. A solution was suggested via self-study while on-the-

job 在职自学. Self-study, in turn, casts a firm and unwavering spotlight on morale and its

maintenance. The final third of the chapter is devoted to discussing this issue. Starting

with an exploration of the role of the TJGZTX, which straddled the line between training

and motivation, serving as a forum for both activities, I proceed to a sustained discussion

of the RWTG, dwelling on its production and its content. I conclude by observing that if

Li Ming had been at the heart of the campaign, serving as a model subject in need of

reformation, then by 1956 other more locally organized campaigns began to promote

local activist model statistical workers as subjects worthy of emulation.

Red and Expert: The Need for Revolutionary Professionals

The Communists had won the Civil War on the back of a large-scale peasant revolution.

Their experience in governance prior to 1949 had been restricted to small pockets of

territory and tiny populations in Jiangxi and the Shan-Gan-Ning border regions.480

The

transition to greater political control, starting in 1948 in the Northeast and spreading

elsewhere over time, was hamstrung by a severe shortage of trained and educated

personnel.481

Such personnel were needed to effectively man the various and expanding

480

In some of these areas statistical work was undertaken as early as 1941. For more, see: Renmin

University. Tongjixue jiangyi—diliu juan 《统计学讲义—第六卷》 (Lectures in Statistics—Volume 6).

Beijing: Renmin University Press, 1959.

481

As Ezra Vogel observed in a 1967 essay: “In China, with a population larger than Europe and Africa

combined, a vast majority of the population in 1949 had no school training, did not speak the major dialect,

and was not part of a national communication network.” See: Ezra Vogel 1967: 40. In anticipation of this

problem, which would only grow in magnitude, the Politburo had articulated the need to train cadre at a

meeting at Xibaipo in September 1948. See: James Gao. The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou: the

Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949-1954. Hawai’i: University of Hawai’I Press, 2004, 16. Also see:

Lee 1991: 14, 45-46.

197

organs of the state and help govern the newly established republic. Given that the

revolution and civil war era “conception of the cadre as a combat leader was not ideally

suited to the tasks of civil administration that faced the Chinese Communists after 1949,”

new cadres were needed.482

Recruits were, for the most part, drawn from three strata of

society.

First, the “positivists” who gushed up from the movements; most of these

were working class-people with more “virtue” than “ability”; we know

that many workers were rapidly promoted to supervisory positions in

factories, but probably only a few of them were given complex

administrative positions. Second, the students, undoubtedly a much more

promising source of recruitment; most of them had been sympathetic to

the Communists, even though they were usually not involved in the illegal

Party organizations of the cities; these were the “new intellectuals.” Third,

the “old intelligentsia”: the new regime preferred young to old

intellectuals, but, as An Tzu-wen indicated, the older ones were needed as

well.483

Accordingly, the number of civilian cadres increased fourfold by 1953: from 720,000 in

1949, to 2,750,000 in September 1952, to 3,310,000 the following year.484

While discussions linking “virtue” 德 and “ability” 才 have a long history in

Chinese political and moral philosophy, they appear to have been first deployed in a

communist revolutionary context by Mao in speech he made in 1938.485

In its later

expression as Red and Expert, the dichotomy and relative dominance of one over the

other at any given point in time has been an influential heuristic device for understanding

482

Schurmann 1968: 164.

483

Schurmann 1968: 168. Also see Vogel 1967: 54-59, for a discussion of the major groups of cadres based

on their origins. On the general question of how the PRC state dealt with intellectuals in the early 1950s,

see: Eddy U. “The Making of Zhishifenzi: The Critical Impact of Registration of Unemployed Intellectuals

in the Early PRC.” The China Quarterly, no. 173 (2003): 100-121.

484

Schurmann 1968: 168; and Vogel 1967: 40; with both citing different works by An Tzu-wen.

485

Schurmann 1968: 165. Schurmann observes that Mao himself have been inspired by a speech by Stalin.

198

events and policies in China since the 1950s.486

But we would do well to remember that

the ideal cadre was to be Red and Expert in equal measure.487

He was to have the

technical and organizational skills to promote the work done in his unit, while at the same

time also be brimming with ideological purity and revolutionary fervor so that any

counter-revolutionary elements could not regain a foothold. Mao himself would note

twenty years after his 1938 speech: “there is no doubt that politics and economy, and

politics and technology should be united. It has been so in the past and will be so forever.

This is what red and expert mean.”488

The Red Expert thus drew his authority both from

his expertise and from his ideological correctness. To the extent that experience was

important, it was the cadre’s personal experience garnered in the present. The only

significant past experience of value in this formulation was the advanced experience of

the Soviet Union. In this way, the Republican era dichotomy between experience and

expertise as two clashing sources of authority was neatly side-stepped.489

The PRC aimed

to produce a new kind of cadre (professional).490

486

For a more recent instance, see: Joel Andreas. Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and

the Origins of China’s New Class. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.

487

Meisner 1999.

488

Mao continued: “political workers must have some knowledge of business. It may be difficult for them

to have a lot, but it may not do for them to have only a little. They must have some. To have no practical

knowledge is to be pseudo-red, empty-headedly political. Politics and technology must be combined

together. In agriculture, this means carrying out experiments; in industries, understanding advanced models,

trying out new techniques, and producing new goods.” See: Mao Tse-Tung 1969. Red And Expert—

January 31, 1958. Source: Long Live Mao Zedong Thought, a Red Guard Publication, 1969; included in

Mao’s Collected Works, Vol. 8. Source: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-

works/volume-8/mswv8_04.htm

489

This distinction has been illustrated particularly well in the field of medicine, where the experience of

traditional Chinese medicine was pitted against the expertise of modern medical science, setting up two

contrasting sources of authority. See: Daniel Asen 2012. “Dead Bodies and Forensic Science: Cultures of

Expertise in China, 1800-1949.” Columbia University, PhD dissertation, 2012.; Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei 2002.

“How Did Chinese Medicine Become Experiential? The Political Epistemology of Jingyan.” Positions:

East Asia Cultures Critique 10.2 (2002): 333-364.

199

Students and young people more generally were quickly identified as the target

group for achieving the ideal balance of Red and Expert. The “positivists,” because they

were often too old to train, and the “old intelligentsia,” who were needed in the

immediate short-term but would always be politically and ideologically suspect, were

both deemed less suitable. Accordingly, the training and ideological indoctrination of the

young was carried out at all possible levels, keeping both expediency and long term goals

in mind.491

On a national scale, “of the 2,750,000 cadres in China in mid-1952, 66,000

[2.4%] had graduated from regular universities, 100,000 [3.6%] had been processed at

“people’s revolutionary universities,” but over 1,100,000 [40%] had been trained in

rotating training courses.”492

Furthermore, this ideal of Red and Expert was applied not

just to cadres who were, after all, defined by their leadership roles and by specific

minimum ranks, but to all young skilled and semi-skilled workers needed by the state.493

University Education and Training: The Case of Renmin University

Discussions concerning the setting up educational institutions to train cadre picked up

pace after the official declaration of the People’s Republic in October of 1949.494

Surveys

490

On an early discussion of the professional as possessor of authority, see: Talcott Parsons “The

Professions and Social Structure.” Social Forces 17, no. 4 (May, 1939): 457-467. Recent works on question

of professionalization have called for the need to move beyond Talcott Parson’s now “traditional”

definition and focus instead on precisely the issues of expertise, skill, technique, and experience. See:

Gordin 2004: 805; and Mackenzie 2006: 11 (on the role of professional judgment).

491

On the challenges faced by Wang Sihua in training adequate numbers of statistical cadre in the northeast

in 1950, see: Wang Sihua 1986: 9-10.

492

Vogel 1967: 45; citing An Tzu-wen in turn.

493

It bears pointing out that the words 德 and 才 are never mobilized, though they are very much the

implicit categories at work, in most of the materials I consult in this chapter.

494

For a summary of communist education and cadre training pre-1949 see Douglas Stiffle. “Building

Socialism at Chinese People’s University: Chinese Cadres and Soviet Experts in the People’s Republic of

200

by visiting Soviet advisors had already investigated the nature and content of education at

various institutions across the country. Eventually, it was decided that most major pre-

existing universities would not disturbed.495

Instead, a new university would be

established that would serve as a national model. Dubbed the People’s University 人民大

学 (Renmin Daxue), its principal focus was to train students in “economic-managerial

specialties that were the regime’s highest priorities in 1949-1950.”496

The University was

inaugurated on 3 October 1950.

In plans drawn up in November and December of 1949 it had been proposed that

the University would offer two types of courses. The Regular-Course 本科 would involve

two to four years of study in one of eight departments: Economics, Economic Planning,

Finance-Credit, Trade, Cooperatives, Factory Management, Law, and Diplomacy. Short-

term training classes 训练班, envisaged as six-month courses offered by the same

departments, emphasized economic management and state administration with the idea of

producing trained cadre who could be put to work straightaway. In the December plan,

the name of these short courses was changed from “training class” 训练班 to “specialized

China, 1949-1957.” University of California, San Diego, PhD Dissertation, 2002, 89-102. Also see:

Michael Lindsay. Notes on Educational Problems in Communist China, 1941-1947. New York: Institute of

Pacific Relations, 1950.

495

In Beijing, for instance, both Beijing and Tsinghua universities were allowed to continue operations

without interference. See: Stiffler 2002: 57.

496

Stiffler 2002: 22 Later, Stiffler elaborates: ““In directing that a substantially revised plan be drafted, the

CCP leadership reaffirmed Liu Shaoqi’s clearly-stated priority for the university: Renda would train

Chinese cadres in economic management and state administration. It would not emphasize the training of

cadres in Marxist-Leninist ideology, as in the Yan’an and Civil War-era cadre-training schools, and as the

Soviet advisors recommended.” (p. 64). “By 1952, however, Renda’s priorities would shift back in the

direction of the Marxist-Leninist ideological training that the Soviet experts had recommended.” On a

possible precursor northeastern precursor (东北人民大学) see: Wang Sihua 1986: 9-10.

201

advanced classes” 专修班.497

As for who would attend these classes, it was decided that

“students of the “young intellectual” category should be eighteen to thirty years old and

graduates of senior middle schools or “young intellectual” CCP cadres who had

graduated from junior middle school or the equivalent and had at least three years of

experience in CCP revolutionary work or specialized organs. These students would be

enrolled in the Regular-Course Division.” In contrast, the Short-Courses would enroll

cadre with education equivalent to lower middle-school, who had more than three years’

experience working in the “liberated area” and were between twenty and forty-five years

in age, as well as retrained, old intellectuals.498

While not part of the November list of disciplines, Statistics was added by the

time of the revised December plan.499

At this early stage, Statistics was conceived as

being offered only in a short-term capacity and the November 1949 plan called for 300

students out of a total planned enrollment of 3,800 short term students. Of the planned

2,700 regular course seats, not a single one was in statistics. In the December plan, which

involved a general downsizing, the corresponding numbers were 200 out of 3,000 short

term students; and zero out of 1,400 regular-course students.500

Dedicated teachers too

were downsized, from five out of 185 in the November plan to two out of fifty in the

497

Stiffler 2002: 66. Soviet advisors number decided at 50 (down from 185). “The CCP leadership decided

to put in first place the six-month Short-Course Division, which emphasized economic management and

state administration, while cutting the two-to four-year Regular-Course Division. This represented a clear

victory for Liu Shaoqi’s pragmatic, short term, technocratic priorities, and for the regime’s goal of rapid

economic recovery.”

498

Stiffler 2002: 145.

499

Pedagogy was also added at this time.

500

Stiffler 2002: 70.

202

December one.501

It was from such humble origins that Renmin University became the

center of research and training in statistics over the course of ensuing the decade.

By June 1952, when a formal department of Statistics was established, the

University had become the central node for theoretical and pedagogical research in

statistical training.502

As Table 1 shows, over the rest of the decade, at least 2,200

students received some form of training in statistics at the University.503

Table 1. Renmin University Statistics

Graduates/Enrollees504

1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 Total

专修生

Short-term Students 71 145 493 172 136 0 135 99 80 51 1382

研究生Research

Students 0 13 5 0 25 31 0 2 0 0 76

本科生

Regular

Students 0 0 23 109 0 192 99 104 82 135 744

Total 71 158 521 281 161 223 234 205 162 186 2202

Source:

It is unclear whether the targets set in November and December 1949 for the first batch of

students were actually met. Data from the Alumni Record indicates that only students

attending ‘advanced specialized classes’ were graduated in the first two years.505

The first

501

Stiffler 2002: 72. Stiffler also notes that early curricular plans had extreme scarcity of specialized

courses; curricula for several different courses actually similar. See pp. 79.

502

Its role in curricular organization and design, as well as in directing the general direction of statistical

education, is discussed in Part I Chapter III.

503

This estimate and the individual breakdowns in the table are based on annual rosters of graduates

produced by Renmin University. I do not know if these lists are exhaustive, so the likelihood that additional

students were trained remains.

504

This table was compiled based on annual rosters from the statistics departments’ alumni publication. For

details, please consult: Xiaoyou jiniance 校友纪念册 (Alumni Record). Beijing: People’s University Press,

2007, 1-7.

505

The data from the Record may be incomplete and as such the assertions made and conclusions drawn

can at best be tentative.

203

class of graduates with the equivalent of an undergraduate degree was produced in

1953.506

This makes sense if, per the plans, regular courses were to last two to four years

and students had started instruction in 1950. Even so, only twenty-three undergraduates

were produced that year, less than five percent of the total (521) students enrolled in the

statistics program. 1953 was also the year with the highest number of graduating students,

coinciding with the start of the first five year plan (1953-57) and a push towards greater

planning and statistical work.507

After that peak, the number of people trained in any

given year was in the neighborhood of 200, with the share of undergraduates gradually

rising to constitute the majority by 1960. The total number of graduate students or

researchers 研究生 was just seventy-six for the entire period, with the majority

concentrated around 1955 and 1956. The most significant and suggestive result for our

purposes here is that even at a place like Renmin University, the focus was on preparing

statistical workers via short term courses: over the entire decade 63% (1382 out of 2202)

of all students were trained in advanced specialized classes.

In addition to Renmin University, other departments and schools were set up at a

variety of other places during these early years. Table 2 provides a basic chronology of

some of the major statistical schools or departments that were set up during the decade of

the 1950s.508

506

Throughout the entire decade, statisticians could not attain the academic degree of Dr. 博士 or Assoc.

Dr. (副博士), nor gain professional designations like engineers. See: The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre

1957: 1

507

After 1955 pressure to replace cadres (per Vogel) had reduced (find page citation), and this seems to fit

with the numbers above, where the number of 专修生 declined after 1955.

508

The Renmin University School of Statistics’ Alumni Record for 2007 observes that the Renmin

Department of Statistics was the first to be set up under the aegis of the new economics of the PRC. Right

now, I am not sure how to evaluate this claim against information in Table 2 above.

204

Table 2. Establishment of Dedicated Statistical Schools or Departments

Source: 中华人民共和国统计大事记，1949-2009 (DSJ)

Date Name of Bureau/Activity Province/ Region

Sometime in 1950 Xiamen University Statistics Department Fujian

August of 1951 Northeast Planning Statistics Institute Northeast

June of 1952 Renmin University Statistics Department Beijing

November 29 1952 Northeast Finance and Economics Institute Northeast (Changchun?)

July of 1954 Chongqing School of Statistics Chongqing

August of 1954 Xi'an School of Statistics Xi'an

June of 1955 Shanghai School of Statistics Shanghai

March 27 1958

Control of the Shanghai, Chongqing, and Changchun Statistical

Schools transferred to respective provinces

Shanghai, Chongqing,

Changchun

March 27 1958

Control of the Nanchang and Xi'an Statistical Schools transferred to

respective provinces Nanchang; Xi'an

Some of these schools and departments offered Regular Courses, but most of them also

provided shorter term training. In many instances these were institutions that had existed

prior to 1949 and had been reorganized and re-designated special schools. Even if we

assume that these schools trained a similar number of students as Renmin University, we

would arrive at a total of roughly 20,000 students, at most. Yet, by 1956, claims that there

existed 200,000 statistical workers had been put forth.509

Clearly most of the training that

occurred was not at major universities but elsewhere. One major training site was the

vocational school: the 专科学校. As Li Fuchun had explained in 1951:

[We] cannot train advanced statisticians only at the university level; rather,

under specific requirements and within the overall plan for education,

every province, municipality, large region, should train grassroots

statisticians.510

Vocational/Technical Schools

Li Ming did not have the good fortune to be trained at Renmin University or at any of the

dedicated schools of statistics established in the early 1950s that are identified in Table 2.

In his letter, he denies us the name of his training center, noting only that it was a

509

RWTG: 3; elsewhere in the RWTG, a figure of 190,000 is also cited. See RWTG: 10.

510

DSJ: 5.

205

vocational/technical school. In this experience he was not alone. Expediency and

overwhelming demand meant that most of the tens of thousands of statistical workers, a

significant portion of the 1955 claim of 200,000, were trained in vocational or technical

schools. Such schools, often established anew or created by the takeover of pre-existing

institutions, dotted the entire country and came to supply an entire generation of state

employees, including, of course, statistical workers. This section uses the example of the

Beijing Finance and Economics School to provide a sense of what such schooling may

have been like.

The Beijing Finance and Economics School 北京财经学校 (BFES) was

established on 31st March 1951. In its pre-liberation avatar it had been the Beijing

Business and Vocational High School 高级商业职业学校, which had been founded in

1929.511

Originally located in Wuying Hutong, by the time of its conversion to the BFES,

the school had moved to a much more spacious location and could accommodate 900

students in eighteen classrooms and 180 dorm rooms. Facilities also included a library

and rooms for various other activities. By the end of that year, when a short report on the

school’s activities was drafted, total enrollment at the school stood at 575 students

divided across Regular and Intensive classes. During those initial months, the school also

graduated 179 students in the Regular Class stream, as well as ninety-eight students

through short-term courses in accounting and statistics.512

Four courses of study were offered by the BFES during these initial years:

Regular Classes, Intensive classes, and two types of short-term classes. Each course of

511 BMA 004-010-00008: 7-9.

512

BMA 004-010-00008: 3-4.

206

study was designed with a different target audience in mind, and was set up to meet

different goals. Table 3 summarizes these differences.

Table 3. BFES-Early characteristics (1951-1952)513

Regular Classes Intensive Classes

Short-term:

Accounting & Tax

Short-term:

Statistics

Educational

Qualifications

Middle-school

equivalent High-school equivalent

Middle-school

equivalent

Middle-school

equivalent

Qualities

correct thought,

healthy,

willingness to work Correct thought, healthy

Age 15-20

18-28 unemployed

intellectuals

20-40; mostly

unemployed

intellectuals

18-25; mostly

unemployed

intellectuals

Course of Study

3 years; receive

proper education, master modern

finance and

economics

3 months; per pressing needs, receive basic

scientific and econ./fin.

skills

3 months; per

pressing requirements,

specialized training in

relevant skills

6 months; per

pressing

requirements, specialized

training in relevant

skills

No. of classes 16 1 1 1

No. of students 543 32 49 49

After graduation

become middle

level cadre

Participate in city

government work (likely

low level?)

Remarks

Discontinued after

July 1951

Discontinued after

July 1951

The Regular Course was designed as a three-year program for young teenagers with

roughly the equivalent of a middle-school education. The School offered more than 16

regular courses (more than the stipulated 12) but could not meet the stipulated student

teacher ratio of 2.5 to three teachers per course.514

Graduates were subsequently assigned

to work in various bureaus of the city and central government as middle-level cadre. A

report written in November of that year observed that while they were enthusiastic about

work and willing to take on responsibility, their skill levels were inferior to the average

university trained economics graduate .515

The content of the Regular Courses was often

513

Table prepared based on information in BMA 004-010-00008: 2, 1-9

514

BMA 004-010-00008: 3-4.

515

BMA 004-010-00008: 7-9

207

modified to meet the requirements of relevant city and central government bureaus but, in

general, three types of majors were offered: Accounting, Statistics, and Factory

Management. Accounting majors would focus on cost accounting, government

accounting, banking, and other specialized areas. Instruction in Statistics included

advanced statistics, industrial statistics, and other related specialized fields. Factory

management included such courses as Industrial economics and management and labor

organization. In addition, basic disciplinary classes were part of each major, such as math,

introductory statistics, and economic geography.516

In contrast to the Regular Classes, the intensive and short term training classes

were designed to meet immediate and urgent staff shortages, usually in the city

government. Such training normally lasted only three months and dealt with the highly

specific skills required to carry out specific tasks. Students were generally older, and in

many cases had complicated backgrounds because of their identification as unemployed

intellectuals.517

For these students, political study was deemed especially vital in ensuring

their loyalty to the revolution. The report lamented, however, that this was not done in an

organized manner and their subsequent performance at work clearly indicated this. The

two short-term training classes in Accountancy and Statistics appear not to have been

permanent course offerings since they were discontinued after July 1951. A total of

ninety-eight students (forty-nine in each course) were trained this way.

While Li Ming’s self-description of his education in statistics does not exactly fit

any of the forms of training offered by the BFES in its first few years, it was probably

closer to a truncated version of the three-year program described above. This may have

516

BMA 004-010-00008: 5

517

On the categorization and treatment of intellectuals in the early 1950s, see: U 2003.

208

been as much an outcome of differing courses of study drawn up in different parts of the

country as it was an outcome of expediency, which may have led to a premature work

assignment. It is likely, however, that the nature of his study itself was a close

approximation of the situation in Beijing, where, by the end of 1951, sixteen regular

courses were being offered by the BFES. The standard teaching method employed

involved the use of the Five-Stage Teaching Method 五段教学方法.518

The five stages

were: planning the class; checking previously assigned homework; teaching the lesson;

consolidating (revising?) the lesson; and, finally, assigning homework for the next class.

Study materials involved a variety of textbooks designed for specific courses. In many

instances, some of the Renmin University texts discussed in Part I were the principal

study materials.519

Just as significant was study outside of the classroom. This mainly

involved three things: i) monthly current affairs broadcasts; ii) the regular reading of

papers; and iii) additional subject matter reading relating to class-work. In addition,

various forms of teaching, support and guidance were provided in class and outside.520

We shall return to these extra-class forms of training in a later section.

On occasion, the BFES’ facilities were also borrowed by other agencies and

companies to carry out additional training. This was especially sensible in the early years

when the emphasis on practicality and expediency meant using all available resources to

solve pressing concerns and because the school had space to spare. The November report

518

Based on Germany Educational Theory of the late nineteenth century; in a small minority of instances

the three-stage method (san duan jiaoxue fangfa 三段教学方法) was also used. See BMA 004-010-00008:

6, 7-9.

519

At this early stage, books on mathematical statistics 统计数学 were also included.

520

BMA 004-010-00008: 6.

209

on the state of affairs at the BFES had noted with some satisfaction that after the move to

its new location, the school’s infrastructure was more than adequate. In matter of fact, in

November 1951, only 575 students were registered when there was space for 900;

similarly, only 521 students lived in dorms that could accommodate 900.521

As various

agencies and companies sought to adapt to the changing economic goals put forward by

the state, they were able, on their own initiative, to take advantage of this extra space to

meet their short term requirements. One such instance is that of the Beijing City Public

Enterprise Company 北京市公营企业公司 and their attempts to deal with personnel

shortages. In June 1951, the Manger and Deputy Manager of the company approached

the City Government and the City Finance and Economics Committee with a request that

they arrange short-term statistics and accounting courses over the summer and avail the

facilities of the BFES to do so. They explained that the company was going through a

major expansion of existing factories and the establishment of new ones but lacked cadre

for such work. In particular, the lack of statistical workers and accountants was gravely

impeding their work. They estimated that the University graduates already assigned to

them that summer would not be enough to meet their ever-mounting needs. To solve this

widening incongruity, they planned a three-month short-term course to develop statistical

and accounting talent 会计、统计人才. To that end, they requested they be permitted to

borrow 借 empty classrooms at the BFES to carry out this training.522

The request was

521

BMA 004-010-00008: 3-4.

522

BMA 004-007-00065: 1-2.

210

subsequently approved and in August the company reported that they had gotten in touch

with the BFES and classes had commenced the previous month.523

By 1954, such ad hoc arrangements appear to have become less common. This is

most obvious in the changed nature of reports and planning documents from that year and

the year before.524

Differences with the 1951 report exist at the levels of form and content

both. The nine-page 1951 report was hand-written, concise, and focused primarily on an

empirical discussion of classrooms, types of classes, and style of teaching. Everything

about it suggested immediacy, urgency, and improvisation. In contrast, the planning

documents from 1953 and 1954 ran to several tens of pages, were typed or printed, and

adopted formulaic language and standard outlines. Planned action, via regulation and the

setting of specific objectives with specific deadlines, was the stated ideal. By 1953

already, certain basic themes were evident. The first and foremost amongst these was the

elevation of the Soviet Union to the status of role-model. As a planning document noted,

“the teachers, after having studied and analyzed Soviet syllabi and teaching materials,

have realized their superiority and the concordant importance of studying them

intensely.”525

A 1954 planning document was even more explicit in discussing past

achievements and future plans.526

According to it, an educational system was being built

on a foundation of Marxism-Leninism. For guidance and advice it relied on the advanced

experience of the Soviet Union and on the devotion of students and teachers alike, all of

whom wanted to contribute toward the construction of a socialist society. Accordingly,

523

BMA 004-007-00065: 6-7.

524

BMA 004-001-00096 and BMA 004-001-00103.

525

BMA 004-001-00096: 3 Quoting of teachers becomes more and more common a strategy—can be

understood perhaps as the application of the mass-line to education?

526

BMA 004-001-00103.

211

the report noted that over the past few years the level of planning had been raised.

Teachers had also raised their political and professional standards. New testing methods

had been put in place and specialized syllabi and course materials had been prepared.

Teacher training was also actively being carried out at Renmin University and Beijing

Normal University.527

The School’s brief had also become narrower by this time. From a general

vocational school for the training of cadre, it had transformed into a dedicated school

focused on Industrial Management 工业管理, preparing middle level

vocational/technical cadres 中等专业干部.528

Statistical training remained a core

component of the school’s activities, though the scope of the courses was reduced to

reflect the School’s new character. In 1953, statistics course offerings had included:

General Principles of Statistics 统计学原理; Industrial Statistics 工业统计; Capital

Construction Statistics 基本建设统计; and Social and Economic Statistics 社会经济统

计.529

By 1954, the latter two were jettisoned, leaving two qualitative forms of classes,

one focusing on general principles and the second on specialized vocational statistical

skills.530

527

BMA 004-001-00103:16.

528

BMA 004-001-00103.

529

BMA 004-001-00096: 2-3.

530

BMA 004-001-00103: 12.

212

Supplemental Training

A further form of training was supplemental, often carried out by taking a break from

one’s job. Li Ming claimed to have received such supplementary training, which lasted

three months. Such training likely became more and more common as the nature and

quantum of work increased during the first five-year plan period. For instance, in

February of 1954, a joint notification from the Beijing Statistics Bureau and the Bureau

of Personnel Administration was delivered to eight city bureaus concerning the transfer

of already employed cadre for the purposes of further study.531

The notification stated

that the BFES, in order to co-operate with the needs of the large scale economic

construction going on in the country, would train on-the-job 在职 statistical cadre in a

planned way and thereby raise the level of their professional skill. The notification went

on to lament that in recent times the city’s statistical cadres were lacking in backbone 缺

乏骨干 and this problem needed to be addressed. After an investigation, it was resolved

that additional training was especially needed for statistical cadre involved in capital

construction work. Of the sixty-one cadre to be selected for training, thirty-five were to

be selected from that group and, if feasible, the training was slated to begin the same

month and last a total of six months. In addition to the thirty-five seats reserved for the

Construction Bureau, the remaining twenty-six seats were divided across seven bureaus:

Construction and Engineering Bureau (建筑工程局): 35

Local Industry Bureau (地方工业局): 8

Public Works Bureau (建设局): 5

Sanitation Engineering Bureau (卫生工程局): 5

Public Health Bureau (公共卫生局): 1

Public Services Bureau (公用局): 3

Education Bureau (教育局): 1

531

BMA 004-010-00812.

213

Housing Administration (房管局): 3

Total: 61

By 1957, a two-tier structure had emerged for such supplemental training classes.

In the first tier were classes organized by schools that were directly overseen by the State

Statistics Bureau. These were normally attached to universities or to dedicated statistics

schools (see table 2). Every year, the SSB approached Provincial Statistics Bureaus with

a request to send students to these schools. Candidates had to have the rank of section

chief or higher and had to be vetted by the SSB before they could begin their studies. In

addition, some schools insisted on administering admission tests. The training usually

lasted one year. In the second tier were training classes set up by Provincial and City-

level Statistics Bureaus, on occasion working in concert with the local Planning

Committees. The BFES was likely one such school. The student body consisted of cadre

already employed in statistical workers in the local district/area. The training period was

usually in the three to six month range. In 1956, approximately 5,000 students were

attending such classes in schools across fourteen provinces (including Shandong,

Zhejiang, Heilongjiang, Henan, and Hunan).532

In addition, a similar two-tier system of

cadre schools was also used to provide training. Employees of the central government

were sent to cadre schools attached to various central ministries whereas provincial

employees attended provincial cadre schools. Statistical training in these schools was

organized in an ad-hoc manner and most likely substantial variation existed with regards

to students, curriculum, and duration of study.533

532

The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre : 1957: 76.

533

The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre 1957: 76-77.

214

Two other methods were also employed to provide (supplemental) training: night

schools 夜校 and correspondence courses 函授班. In 1957, night-classes were offered by

the Shanghai, South-Central, Northeast, and Sichuan Academies of Finance and

Economics. Correspondence courses were offered by the Correspondence Division of

Renmin University directly from Beijing. The Division had also established coaching

stations 辅导站 in nearby cities such as Tianjin 天津, Taiyuan 太原, and Baoding 保定.

Each of these schools targeted already employed statistical workers who possessed the

equivalent of a senior-middle school education. Even so, they were usually required to

pass an admission test and the nature and content of training was likely modeled on the

regular classes.

The formal and supplemental training described here, in addition to university

level education described in the earlier section, thus comprised the central bulwark of the

state as it sought to create basic human resource infrastructural capacity in statistical

work. Li Ming was a recipient of a mixture of such training. His initial training was at a

vocational school, which was later supplemented by a short-term course in 1954. While I

have found no aggregate data that indicate how many cadres were trained through these

methods, we are now in a position to make some very general estimates.

Confronting Incapacity—Personnel Shortages and the Advocacy of Self-Study

Let us begin with some simple arithmetic. By 1955, the SSB claimed a workforce of

200,000 cadres. In an earlier section I estimated that the number of graduates trained in

statistics at the university level was unlikely to have exceeded 20,000 for the decade of

the ‘50s. This gives us an estimate of about 10,000 graduates by mid-decade. It is

215

somewhat harder to estimate the numbers trained at vocational schools. By the mid-50s

there were schools in at least fourteen provinces. The BFES had just below 600 students

enrolled in three-year courses in 1951. By 1955 this would mean three full cycles of

students. However, we do not know how many of these were trained for statistical work.

For the purposes of estimation, let us assume other schools across the fourteen provinces

were operating in similar fashion. In addition, we know that in 1956 about 5,000 students

were attending three to six month long supplemental courses in these schools. That gives

us an estimate for the year that ranges from 10,000 to 20,000. Assuming the same rate for

1951-55 would give us a range of 50,000 to 100,000 students trained via this method. We

should remember though that supplemental education implies that these cadres had

already received basic training in statistics, either at vocational schools, on the job, or

they were a hold-over from the pre-1949 regime. Like Li Ming, many of them shouldn’t

be counted twice in our attempt to estimate total numbers trained. Statisticians were also

trained at other venues, notably cadre schools and schools run by various ministries.

Accepting that this method offers us an extremely imprecise estimate, we can still

reasonably claim that it would be a real stretch to make the numbers add up to 200,000.534

So what can we conclude? Training of cadre, where it existed, consisted primarily

of short-term courses, after which cadres were assigned to work in the hope that they

would learn on-the-job. This mirrors the story at the national level as far as training of

cadres went. The state was unable to train enough personnel through traditional schooling.

534

A regional example of such incapacity is the case of statistical work in Beijing in 1953. Of the 3,829

full-time and part-time statistical workers spread across the statistics bureau and various other industries,

government departments, and related organs, only 618 were at the rank of scientific staff 科学员 or above.

Furthermore, only 1,291 of the 3,829 had studied any statistics at all. See: BMA 004-008-00291:16.

216

The response, as far as statistics was concerned, was the advocacy of ‘self-study.’535

In

fact, in 1957 the Education Department of the SSB published a volume entitled The Self-

study of Statistical Cadre 《统计干部的自学》 where it went so far as to substantially

abnegate responsibility for training sufficient numbers of personnel. As they explained in

the volume’s first chapter:

But, we must realize one thing: no matter whether in recent times or in the

future, the country cannot nor must it establish statistical schools and

training courses on a large scale and get students to attend them. Even

night school and correspondence classes can only realistically be

organized in large cities and in limited numbers. Therefore, the education

of statistical cadre must rely on one method—self study while on the job

[在职自学].536

In addition to addressing the key limitation that not enough personnel were being

trained, self-study also offered a solution to another common complaint. Li Ming had

expressed dissatisfaction in his letter that in spite of his training there was much about the

production process he did not understand. He worried that the blind application of

statistical method was not in the least bit productive. One of the published responses to

his letter began by confirming this precise problem: Li Yuren, a university graduate,

acknowledged in his October 1955 letter his dismay at being unable to apply to statistical

work the theory he had learnt in school. Only by learning on-the-job was he was able to

bridge this divide.537

The publication of The Self-study of Statistical Cadre was thus

aimed at addressing both these issues.

535

Another way to understand the need for self-study can be appreciated from a general sense of the

statisticians’ brief: Bureaus and their employees, Prefecture and County Offices—2,200 + , Village

cooperatives overseeing 750,000 villages. Then you had the industrial units and ministerial employees.

Suddenly, 200,000 appear insufficient!

536

The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre 1957: 3.

537

Li Yuren. “Wo dui tongji gongzuo de renshi 我对统计工作的认识 (My Understanding of Statistical

Work).” Tongji gongzuo 1955.10: 53. Also published in RWTG: 33-35.

217

In justifying the need for self-study, the volume offered some preliminary

clarifications. The first of these had to do with the object of their study. China, it

explained, was passing through a great historical epoch, transforming itself from a

backward agricultural country to an advanced industrialized one. Such a goal could only

be realized if the nation possessed the most advanced science and technology. But owing

to the recent history of semi-colonization, and the even longer history of semi-feudalism,

China’s culture, science, and technology had all been utterly backward 十分落后. Since

1949, leaping progress 飞跃的发展 has been made, but much remained to be done. The

previous year the party had prepared a twelve-year plan for science and technology, so

that the nation might match or surpass the most advanced countries in the world. And

now, the youth must march towards science and accomplish this great and formidable

task. Statistical cadres were no exception to this expectation. The goal of their study was

to unceasingly raise the standard of statistical work, to enrich the content of statistical

science, and bring together statistical theory and practice, thereby contributing to nation-

building. In other words, they were to transform themselves into statistical experts 统计

专门家. This kind of expertise was particularly important—empty headed theoreticians

空头理论家 whose study was not functional and divorced from actual requirements were

labeled expressly undesirable.

The second clarification addressed the question of whether dedicated study was

necessary. The volume explained that while statistical work naturally involved addition

and subtraction 加加减减, it definitely was not limited only to those activities. Nor was

statistics merely a numbers game 数字游戏. Rather, statistics possessed abundant

political and economic content because they indicated the results of the labors of China’s

218

hundreds of millions of people. Study would ensure the avoidance of errors and accurate

analysis, and thereby help in the deduction of the intrinsic laws of all objective things. In

particular, knowledge of economics and business, political theory, and statistical theory

were all critical to becoming statistical experts. But, the volume went on to lament, in

recent times the level of statistical workers had been lacking. The only way of solving

this contradiction was for workers at all levels to self-study. Admittedly, this was no easy

task—time was limited and guidance often absent. And yet, the volume exhorted workers

to persevere and carry out long-term self-study.538

Having already deployed the rhetoric of expertise, the volume in equal measure,

also asked workers to be warriors 战士 contributing to the construction of a socialist

society. Guidelines for self-study were divided into two sections: those dealing with

elementary or foundational knowledge common to all statistical workers; and specialized

materials and guidelines for sub-discipline specific statistics (e.g. industrial statistics,

agricultural statistics, etc.).539

Elementary knowledge began with ensuring that all statistical workers had

attained at least junior-middle-school literacy. A basic knowledge of mathematics, natural

science and social science was also required. Next on the agenda were subjects such as

Political Economy, dialectical and historical materialism 辩证唯物主义; 历史唯物主义,

and China’s revolutionary history. These subjects were viewed as the foundation of all

social science and hence essential. This was followed by knowledge of the Party’s

General and Specific Policies and familiarity with practical professional work 业务知识.

538

The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre 1957: 2-3.

539

The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre 1957: 4.

219

Familiarity with the Party’s policies was deemed necessary since it would enable

statistical cadre to provide data and analyses to the leadership so that policy might be

formulated and implementation scrutinized. Practical professional work consisted of

familiarizing cadre with the two most important methods of statistical data collection: (1)

The Periodical Report System 报表制度 and (2) Survey Plans 调查方案. And in

mastering them, workers were also required to master the various relevant indicators 指

标 used within a bureau and their calculation methods 计算方法. Thus, in order to carry

out good work one had to have familiarity with every indicator in the periodical reports

and its overall place in organization 编制 and planning, in deciding policy, and in

management. 540

General statistics related classes were divided into three categories.541

The first of

these was a study of the basic problems in statistical theory, where the goals and methods

of statistics, the collection of data, and their ordering and analysis were introduced.

Concepts included were: mass surveys 大量观察法, summarization 汇总, stratification

分组, averages 平均数, trends 动态数, and index numbers 指标数.542

The next category

540

The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre 1957: 5-6.

541

The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre 1957: pp. 7.

542

Recommended study materials included:

i. Tongji lilun yiban wenti jianghua 统计理论一般问题讲话 (Common Problems in

Statistical Theory). Beijing: China Statistical Press, 1956.

ii. Tongji jiangzuo jiangyi 《统计讲座讲义》第 1-11 讲 (Statistical Lectures—No.1 to 11).

Beijing: Statistical Press, 1957.

iii. Tongjixue yuanli jiangyi 《统计学原理讲义》(Lectures on Statistical Principles). Beijing:

Peoples University Press, 1956.

Of these, the first is popular and easy to understand and meant for those with a low educational level, who

have just begun the study of statistics. The contents of the second and third are relatively more detailed

(abundant) and are suited for cadre with a higher level of education. [it is not specified what high and low

here might be] For those statistical workers who want to study even further, they could study: Tongji lilun

《统计理论》第 1-10 章 (Statistical Theory). Edited by the Soviet Statistics Bureau and translated by the

220

consisted of branch specific statistics, for example, capital construction statistics focuses

on those phenomena relating to construction work and their analysis.543

Finally, there was

the study of statistical economics, which involved the collection of data relating to

economic activity (indices), their content, calculation, and analysis. The objects of such

analysis were central economic concerns: national income, balance sheets, the

organization of economic work, etc.544

In addition, two related subjects that workers were

encouraged to also study were accounting and the analysis of Economic Activity. And

finally, there were materials on Marxist-Leninism related treatises on economics and

statistics. Only by studying (and mastering) all these materials could one aspire to

become a true statistical expert.545

The basic organization of self-study was calibrated based on the education and

experience of individual cadre.546

For those cadres who did not possess a Junior-Middle

Statistical Press, 1957. Additionally, they could consult《统计学》by .Г. 斯特鲁米林 and 《统计一般

理论问题》by Т.И. 科兹洛夫 et al. For details, please see: The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre : 9-10.

543

Much of the rest of the volume was dedicated to the discussion of such branch specific study—more on

this below.

544

Recommended study materials included:

i. 《统计讲座讲义》Every lecture following lecture no. 12 (国家统计局教育处编)

ii. 《经济统计学讲义》(Xu Qian 徐前 et al. Statistical Press, 1957)

iii. 《经济统计学教程》(by Prof. А.И. 彼得罗夫, Statistical Press, 1957)

iv. 《统计理论》第 11-26 章(published by the Soviet Statistical Bureau)

Of these the first two were meant for cadre whose education levels were relatively low; they were relatively

easy to understand and their contents relatively comprehensive. The last of these was described as a good

combination of statistical economics and basic problems in statistical theory; its portions on statistical

theory were relatively comprehensive and it could serve as a principle reference book. For details, please

see: The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre : 9-10

545

Study materials included: Documents relating to 8th

People’s Congress as well as other important

meetings of the government and party; articles from RMRB, other journals, especially relating to the state

and party’s policies; Individual department’s internal newsletters (内部刊物) and Tongji gongzuo, Jihua

jingji 计划经济; and the three volumes of Tongji gongzuo zhongyao wenjian huibian published by the

Statistical Press in 1955, 1957, and 1959; and Jisuan jishu jiangyi 《计算技术讲义》. Beijing: People’s

University Press, 1955.

546

The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre : 11-13.

221

School Education Level, the first task was to attain a level of education equivalent to

Junior-middle school and to familiarize oneself with the basic professional knowledge

required for one’s job. Spare time outside of work was to be utilized to become literate.

Additional time, whether during or after work, had to also be dedicated to learning about

party policies, and their implementation. At the next level were cadres who possessed

education equal to or above the junior-middle school level but who had not

systematically studied political and statistical theory. Such cadre had to exploit their

familiarity with work and use it as a foundation for the study of theory. Their goal was to

convert themselves into statistical cadre with the ability to work independently. Such

study had three components: Political Theory, the Party’s Policies and Knowledge of

Professional Duties, and Statistics and related classes. During their study, the primary

focus was to be on understanding the nature of work, especially the method of organizing

periodic reports.

Cadre with several-years’ experience of statistical work comprised the third group.

In order to further raise their existing professional work experience, so that they could

perform even better, their primary goal was to systematize their knowledge and

experience and meld it with theory. These cadres were to dedicate the bulk of their spare

time to study “statistics and related classes.” In order to do this they could begin by

focusing on the specialized statistics of their branch and proceed to expand the scope of

study based on specific needs that arose out of work.547

In the final category were cadres

who had attained a university degree or had some university-level education. Their main

tasks were to further research Political Economy and branch-specific economics, and to

547

In so doing, they were not, however, to neglect the “Party’s Policies and Knowledge of Professional

Duties (党的方针政策和实际业务知识), since there was often new material to keep up with; see: The

Self-Study of Statistical Cadre : 12.

222

master economic statistics and branch-specific statistics. In so doing, they would become

Statistical Experts, capable of producing reports with statistical analysis, and able to

scientifically and practically address complicated questions surrounding statistical

methods. Once the general foundational content had been clarified, statistical workers

were directed to the main content of The Self-study of Statistical Cadre. Details of

pedagogical materials and study methods were laid out in seven branch-specific chapters,

their sequence indicating their relative importance: Industrial Statistics; Agricultural

Statistics; Capital Construction Statistics; Commercial Statistics; Material Supply;

Culture, Education, Health, and Hygiene; and Surveys of Family Income and Expenditure.

Finally, instructions were also provided on how workers might access the various

study materials listed in The Self-study of Statistical Cadre. All books that had been made

public 公开 could be purchased at the local Xinhua Bookstore. If a particular book was

not available locally, then it could be ordered from the Beijing Mail-Order Bookstore 邮

购书店. Since the volume only listed a small proportion of the actual numbers of books

available on economics and statistics, cadre were encouraged to browse catalogs and

purchase other relevant books. As for those materials published or compiled and printed

by the Interior 内部, somewhat different procedures would have to be followed.

Materials published by the Renmin University Press or by the Statistical Press, such as

different volumes of the compendia Compilation of Important Documents on Statistical

Work 《统计工作重要文件汇编》, could be purchased from the relevant presses with a

letter of introduction from the cadre’s home bureau. Compiled and printed materials, such

as Statistics and Planning forms and their rules, survey plans, compilations of answered

problems (问题回答汇编, as well as materials such as documents from last year’s

223

activist statistical workers meeting, and so on, could usually be obtained from the

workers’ own units. Failing that, they could be sourced from an administratively higher

Statistical Agency.548

That self-study was largely a fiction, a utopia, is not hard to imagine. The

program of study outlined in The Self-study of Statistical Cadre is sufficient to intimidate

a full-time student, let alone a worker with a full-time job. Thus far, I have yet to find

conclusive evidence that its adoption and use as a manual achieved any degree of

popularity among statistical workers. And yet, such an assessment of The Self-study of

Statistical Cadre is also important for it points to another basic incapacity. Self-study was

a road to self-improvement, a pathway to greater contribution to the nation. But such self-

improvement could only be actualized if morale was high. For, only when morale was

high would one expect to see cadres willing to dedicate their energies to advancing their

own training and education. Let us, therefore, return once more to Li Ming and his

frustrations.

Responding to Li Ming

Since its first issue in 1953, the Tongji gongzuo had served the dual role of a professional

journal and didactic mouthpiece.549

By 1955, each monthly issue contained

approximately 25 articles that spanned such topics as methodology, statistical data on

specific questions or economic activities, reports of annual and local meetings concerning

statistical work, translations of works by Soviet statisticians, reports from specific work

548

The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre : 75.

549

Related journals fulfilled similar roles as well. See for instance: Jianshe 《建设》; Jingji jihua《经济

计划》, among others.

224

units on recent achievements, announcements declaring the start of a new campaign, and

descriptions or transcripts of of major speeches that touched upon statistical work. By

disseminating experience and information about statistical activities to various parts of

the country many of these essays served a pedagogical purpose. Every issue also carried

in it reports that touted achievements in statistical work or essays that wished to share

experience 经验 about a particular kind of recently completed activity. Included also

were essays by enthusiasts/activists 积极分子, meant to serve as encouragement to their

fellow workers. On occasion, one could also find articles publicly shaming the poor work

of a particular statistical worker or unit.550

By publishing Li Ming’s letter, however, the editors of Tongji gongzuo were

adopting a new strategy. In what appears to be the first instance of its kind, the journal

was used as a platform for a more open-ended debate on the very nature and purpose of

statistical work. Instead of specific discussions on method or exhortations to do well a

specific kind of statistical work, the editors (and the SSB as a whole) hoped to

demonstrate and disseminate a mass ‘correct’ response to several key questions.551

The

first of these centered on the claim that statistical work was mere arithmetic jugglery—

adding, subtracting, calculating percentages, and so on—and, therefore, utterly boring 枯

燥无味.552

Was such an understanding correct, the editors asked? How should one arrive

at an accurate understanding (appreciation) of statistical work? The second question dealt

550

See, for instance, the shaming of a unit leader for not filing statistical reports in: Tongji gongzuo

1955.11: 48.

551

Li Ming was, of course, not the only one to cast doubts on statistics. An article in the RWTG named a

handful of other workers who had registered similar complaints. Other names included: Liu Guang 刘光,

Zhi Ge 止戈, etc. See: RWTG: 23, 63.

552

Kuzao wuwei; lit. dry and tasteless.

225

with the issue of usefulness. The editors invited readers to ascertain whether Li Ming’s

verdict on the uselessness of statistics was correct. They encouraged readers to consider

the role and status of statistics in the ongoing national construction (nation-building).

How could statistics’ full potential be brought into play? The final question addressed Li

Ming’s fears of the lack of advancement and the poor future prospects of statistical

workers in general. Li Ming had lost faith 失去信心 in statistics, they acknowledged.

But was this justified? What, after all, were the prospects of statistical workers; could

they rise through the ranks?553

In October 1955, two months into the debate, the editors

of the journal decided to collapse the three questions down to one central question: Why

[are we] unwilling to do statistical work?554

Over 600 responses were received by the journal in the fourth months from

August to November.555

A representative handful was published each month: five in

August, four in September, five in October, and three in November. The December issue

brought the debate to a close and carried two articles. The first was a general overview of

the debate, summarizing content from the numerous letters that had been received but not

published. The second, as noted at the start of this chapter, was the essay by SSB Deputy

Director Jia Qiyun. The eighteen responses as well as the summary essays were

subsequently published as RWTG. Before an analysis of the debate can be offered it is

worth probing the logic of switching to a single question prompt in October—the

553

Li Ming 历明. “Comrade Li Ming’s Letter.” Tongji gongzuo 1955.07: 42. Republished in RWTG: 7.

554

RWTG: 64.

555

RWTG:55.

226

unwillingness to do statistical work. For that, we need to consider the peculiar status of

statistical work itself.

The (Peculiar) Status of Statistics

For a whole generation that came of age in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the gun-toting,

landlord-slaying peasant revolutionary was a heroic ideal. Even if many did not directly

participate in the revolution, sympathy for the communists was widespread. Accordingly,

one of the principle challenges for the CCP once they came to power in 1949 was to

successfully channel this popular fervor towards the task of national construction—the

building of a new China. The broad economic strategy adopted to achieve this goal was

that of industrialization. Any surplus produced in the economy was to be invested in

industrial production. Agriculture, the dominant sector of the economy, was marginalized

to the extent that its primary purpose was to support the ongoing industrialization. This

bias in favor of production, a matter of economic policy, in turn dictated certain social

policies. The emphasis on productivity and rapid industrialization at the expense of

agriculture went hand-in-hand with a shift in focus from the country-side to the city. For

a rural, peasant based, and largely peasant-led revolution, urban China had become the

new field of action and achievement.556

It is not surprising that concerns with the un-

regulated movement of people, especially from the rural country-side into cities, began to

grow, and were often justified via a need for stability and the desire to ensure the best

conditions for production.

556

Of course there was land reform, which was rural, but the major thrust now was towards the city. Old

and new works have focused on this transition from a variety of angles. See, for instance: Vogel 1969

(Canton), Pickowicz and Brown 2007 (various regions in China), and Gao 2004 (Hangzhou).

227

One of the results of this shift was the birth of a new type of hero, who engaged in

production for the country. This applied to agricultural and industrial work in equal

measure, but the emphasis on industry meant that the especially heroic work was done by

those working in factories, producing the raw materials and finished goods that would

build a new China. This had implications for the valuation of administrative and service-

based work. The “new hero was not the administrative cadre but the engineer.”557

For

skill-based technical professions, such as statistics, the repercussions were dire.558

As

Wang Xiangyuan explained in his essay in Tongji gongzuo:

Right now there are many comrades who are unwilling to do non-

productive technical work [非生产技术性], but are willing to do

productive technical work. This kind of thinking is present not just among

statistical workers, but also those who work in accounting, note-taking,

official correspondence, typing, etc.559

Statistics, along with the other professions that Wang listed, did not enjoy the common

man’s respect because they did not produce tangible goods.560

This judgment is reflected

in a table in Ten Great Years, which lists the relative labor distribution between

productive work 生产部门 and non-productive work 非生产部门 annually from 1949 to

1958. Titled “Rapid Increase in Percentage of Workers and Other Employees in

Productive Work,” the table shows a clear upward trend in the share of productive work:

557

Vogel 1967: 48.

558

An interesting contrast to the PRC was India, where statistics in the early post-independence years was

highly valorized and its practitioners very powerful; more on that in Part III.

559

Wang Xiangyuan. “我一定把工作做得更好.” In: RWTG: 38.

560

On the distinction between productive and non-productive work and its roots in Smithian and later

Marxian analysis, see: Susan Peter-Smith. “Defining the Russian People: Konstantin Arsen'ev and Russian

Statistics Before 1861.” History of Science 45, part 1 (2007): 47-64, 50.

228

climbing from 65% in 1949 to 85.1% by 1958; the share of non-productive work

declining correspondingly from 35% to 14.9%.561

Even amongst ‘non-productive technical’ professions, statistics stood out. A

science that straddled the administrative and the productive, it required skilled workers

capable of collecting and analyzing vast amounts of data so that tangible production

could be better understood, organized, and improved. Its close cousin, accounting, had

similar characteristics but was different in significant respects.562

Unlike statistics, it was

not part of a national organization linking the center to village and work units.

Accountants were usually restricted to a work-unit, village, cooperative, factory, and so

on, and rarely operated at higher levels of aggregation. Statisticians, in contrast, were part

of a national organization that numbered approximately 200,000 workers by the mid-

1950s. And statistics was fundamental to the rhetoric (and reality) of a socialist state,

whose logic dictated that the centrality of planning was not merely economic theory, but

also a philosophical and practical necessity, predicating all other activity. The collection

and tracking of all information—productive and non-productive—so that informed and

appropriate decisions regarding planning and allocation of men and materiel could take

place was the very cornerstone on which everything rested. But making the argument

theoretically and in the halls of power was one thing, getting the average statistical

worker to do the work, quite another.

To address this problem two related strategies, one a broad appeal to logic and the

other an emotional appeal to the romance of production, can be located. Let us look at the

561

Ten Great Years 1959: 164. The last year in the table, 1957-58, accounts for a significant portion of the

change: a swing of about 12.2%.

562

See: The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre 1957: 7-8, where this distinction is dwelt upon; and Ezhov 1957:

40-41 (Soviet Statistics) .

229

broad appeal first. The logical solution was to claim that all kinds of activity were

important and revolutionary—this, after all, was the view put forward in all textbooks

and self-study books, explicitly or implicitly. As one statistical worker explained in his

response to Li Ming:

…I have come to realize [through my work] that all kinds of revolutionary

work [一切革命工作] are important. There are no distinctions such as

‘important and unimportant,’ ‘small and large,’ ‘valuable and worthless;’

rather, every profession produces its own leading authority [行行出状元].

All one needs to do is to work hard, and no matter the nature of the work,

success will follow…563

The valorization of productive work over non-productive work was also attacked.

Another interlocutor observed that “although statistical workers did not directly

participate in production and, therefore, did not create value, their effect within the larger

process of socialist development could not easily be calculated using such a metric.”564

The most cogent and sustained exposition of this line of reasoning was provided

by deputy director Jia Qiyun 贾启云. In his December essay he wrote that he wished to

explain why every type of work was an important part of national development and that if

one worked hard and with a focused mind, success was guaranteed. The logic to this was

straightforward. Jia proceeded to explain that even though heavy industries were the basis

of building a socialist society, and working in that sector of the economy was no doubt an

honor, other sectors of the economy were just as important. Indeed, without development

in other sectors of the economy, such as light industries, agriculture, transportation,

commerce, and so on, developing heavy industries alone was impossible. Therefore, each

type of work was equally honorable, equally glorious. Furthermore, it was imperative to

563

RWTG: 37. For another instance, see: RWTG: 42.

564

RWTG: 57.

230

recognize that all these important activities could not proceed unless they were supported

by administration, a justice system, diplomacy, national defense, education, and health.

Regardless of whether it was productive 生产性 or non-productive 非生产性, each type

of work was of equal importance and as honorable and full of glory as any other. And

underlying all these activities was planning, for which statistics and numbers were

absolutely critical. Statistics was thus the basis 依据 for everything: whatever the job, if

statistical work was set aside, then it was tantamount to setting aside any prospects for

progress.565

In such a way was statistics placed at the very heart of revolutionary work

and the socialist enterprise.

Cold, calculated logic, however, also found a worthy partner in powerful imagery

and rhetorical flourish. If one was unmoved by the seemingly irrefutable logic of Deputy

Director Jia’s argument, as indeed many may have been, then Feng Jixi’s formulation

may have held greater appeal. Feng, another interlocutor in the Li Ming debate, began his

essay with these words:

Every time I complete a statistical table/chart, my happiness is like that of

a peasant on his field catching sight of a golden ear of wheat, my

excitement like that of a steelworker observing molten steel emerging

from a Martin furnace, (and) my elation like that of an artist completing a

beautiful painting.566

The sleight of hand was obvious. In one sweeping sentence, Feng had equated statistical

work with work in agriculture, industry, and the arts. The key lay in equating a statistical

table (and the report it would invariably be a part of) with the tangible goods produced in

other fields. The table, thus, was the tangible, material product that a statistician

565

RWTG: 67-68. In a subsequent passage he similarly dismissed the notion that statistical work was

subordinate to other kinds of work.

566

RWTG: 10.

231

contributed to the economy. In the previous chapter we have already encountered the

kinds of problems this valorization of the table-as-product generated, in particular the oft-

repeated and much-lamented phenomenon of excess issuing of reports 滥发报表.

Feng’s was not the only case where Li Ming’s interlocutors resorted to rhetorical

flights of fancy, but it was perhaps the most flowery and emphatic of them all. The

romanticization of numbers and statistics had been legitimated just a few months earlier

by none other a figure than poet and author Ba Jin 巴金 (1904-2005). In an essay

published in the People’s Daily he relayed with approval the description of the ongoing

five-year plan as a “song of numbers.”567

In the essay, Ba Jin accepted that in the past

people liked to say that numbers were absolutely boring 枯燥无味, but felt such a

formulation was no longer tenable.568

Numbers, he explained, contained in themselves

abundant meaning. Far from being inert, they could speak; they could relay countless

touching stories and paint beautiful paintings:569

I have always believed: "Poetry should give people the joy of creation,

poetry should spread life [?]." These numbers not only spread life and

happiness, they not only depict to us a happy future, but they also

guarantee that happiness. Not only do these numbers gather the sentiments

of 600 million people, they also embody their common aspirations and are

their signpost [pointing to the future]. With them, correctly, step-by-step,

we shall arrive on the road to [building a] socialist society. They are like a

bright lamp, illuminating the hearts of 600 million.570

567

Ba Jin 巴金. “‘Shuzi de shi, xinfu de baozheng 数字的诗’，幸福的保证 (‘The Song of Numbers,’ the

Guarantee of Happiness).” Renmin ribao 16 July 1955. Also in: Ba Jin. Ba Jin quanji: di shiwu juan 巴金全集—第十五卷 (The Collected Works of Ba Jin: Vol 15). Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1986, 90-

94.

568

As the interlocutors in RWTG would remind us, the value of statistics had indeed changed in the new

China. See: RWTG: 34.

569

Feng had also acknowledged the revolutionary strength of numbers; see: RWTG: 10.

570

The Collected Works of Ba Jin: Vol 15: 92. A variation of this was also quoted in the TJGZTX and

RWTG: 60.

232

The implication was clear. If Li Ming grasped the power of numbers and statistics in the

New China, he would not find them boring at all. And the evocation of collective spirit,

of course, was not incidental either; nor was the focus on the people’s common

aspirations. These themes provided grounds for what was the most concerted and popular

attack on Li Ming.

Attacking Individualism, Honoring Model Workers

Eleven of the eighteen responses published in the TJGZTX and the RWTG highlighted Li

Ming’s problem as one essentially stemming from individualism. The broad basis of the

critique was provided by the Qingdao Statistics Bureau’s Newsletter Group. In their letter,

they observed:

It is our opinion that the basic problem can be traced to the fact that

Comrade Li Ming has not considered his statistical work in light of the

needs of the nation and the people. He has not recognized that every kind

of work carries with it great revolutionary significance…Instead Li Ming

persists in separating himself and thinking only of his personal prospects

and advancement...571

In similar fashion, another interlocutor explained that Li Ming was deceived, even

blinded, by personal profit. As a result, he was unable to see the uses and effects of

statistics.572

Indeed, for a revolutionary worker, individualism was very dangerous. It was

like a noose tying the worker down, making him loose direction, much like a man lost in

the darkness of the night. Such a worker would only go round and round in his small

circle, paying attention only to himself, ignoring the community. He would focus on the

571

RWTG: 17.

572

RWTG: 11.

233

small, not the big; on the near, not the distant; and even after the passage of one, two, or

three years, he would remain unchanged.573

Numerous other instances, declaiming Li

Ming’s individualism, were published.574

On occasion, capitalist was added to the charge,

making it an error not just of individualism but of capitalist individualism.575

Tied to individualism was the implicit tendency towards careerism 野心, even

though it was never articulated as such. The term used instead to discuss the matter was

‘future prospects’ 前途. Li Ming had raised the issue in his letter as well. One key

problem stemmed from the fact that, unlike various other technical professions, one could

not earn advanced degrees or certifications in statistics. The Self-study of Statistical

Cadre had acknowledged this problem on its first page, observing that the SSB had

received numerous letters decrying the absence of advanced degrees for statisticians.

Neither advanced academic degrees of doctor or associate doctor 副博 nor any

professional qualifications such as those granted to engineers were available to statistical

workers.576

Such circumstances naturally raised concerns about career advancement,

professional development, and pay scales among a statistical work force that was

extremely young.577

The response to problems of careerism began with the assertion that the pay-

scales were appropriate, but also sought to reframe the object of study and work. Cadre

573

RWTG: 12.

574

See, for instance, RWTG: 16, 26, 36, 38, 43, 48, 61, 63, 67.

575

RWTG: 35, 65; the latter in Jia Qiyun’s summary essay.

576

The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre 1957: 1.

577

One interlocutor noted, for instance, that even accountants and other service based professions were

doing better on these fronts.; see RWTG: 24. On the pay and hiring structures among statisticians in 1950s

PRC, see: RWTG: 74-76.

234

were told that rather than the attainment of a doctorate, certification as an engineer, or

some similar qualification, the goal was to develop and make prosperous the nation’s

culture, science, and technology, and to bring about rapid industrialization. Statistical

cadres were no exception to this call to arms. In other words, once people were clear

about this, they would no longer obsess about degrees and status, and their achievements

would be recognized appropriately. In the final analysis, accomplishments at work and

not degrees or pay scales were the true measure of study.578

It is at this point that Li Ming, the negative model, had served his purpose. In

order to stress achievement over qualification, positive models, worthy of emulation

needed to be promoted.579

As Jia Qiyun wrote in his December essay, over the past few

years there had been countless heroic model workers who had made stellar contributions

across the various fields of national development work. And, as Jia clarified, statistical

workers were very much among such heroes:

At this year's "National Meeting of Youth Activists for the Construction of

Socialism" were there not just model engineers and (industrial) workers,

but also model shop assistants, model cooks, model pig-farmers? Among

our statistical workers was there also not an advanced youth group led by

comrade Chen Jinbao? They all have the same [glorious] future

prospects.580

578

The Self-Study of Statistical Cadre 1957: 2.

579

The general promotion of model workers had been happening at the national level through conferences

where activist/enthusiastic workers exchanged experiences, their reports subsequently being compiled and

disseminated for wider didactic purposes. A discussion on the Mass Line noted: “leaders must therefore be

skilled in uniting the small number of active elements to form a leading group and must rely on this leading

group to raise the level of the intermediate elements and to win over the backward elements.” See: De Bary

2000: 417

580

RWTG: 69.

235

Indeed, much like other cadre, statistical workers were also recipients of various model

worker awards.581

Such awards were usually made after year-end appraisals had been

carried out.582

One of Li Ming’s interlocutors had reported that because of his stellar

work he had been recognized as a Third Degree Model Worker in 1953 三等工作模范.

Continued excellence at work had resulted in his elevation to a Second Degree Model

Worker the following year. This honor was not just limited to within the company but

also across the city of Taiyuan, and he was handed the label of Shanxi’s Advanced

Worker.583

Similarly, another statistical worker recalled how she was made a First and

Second Degree Advanced Worker.584

The point was thus reiterated: statistical workers

had prospects 前途; they could become statistical experts and model workers 模范工作

者.585

By 1956, the time was ripe for a model worker conference dedicated to statistical

work. The Beijing Statistics Bureau decided to take the lead at the local level. On April

18 1956, it sent out a notification to all bureaus/departments, communes, and associations

within the city to begin making preparations for the city’s (and nation’s?) first Activist

Statistical Workers Meeting 统计工作积极分子大会.586

Held the following month, the

two-day meeting brought together nearly 300 people and recognized and honored

581

As early as 1950 Wang Sihua had spoken of the need to master and popularize the experienced of

advanced workers (“掌握与普及先进分子的工作经验”). See: Wang 1986: 7.

582

RWTG: 37.

583

RWTG: 52-53.

584

RWTG: 59. Another instance can be found on pp. 37.

585

RWTG: 51.

586

BMA 035-002-00203: 2. A similar meeting was organized in Sichuan in March 1957, which was graced

with the presence of Zhu De. See: DSJ: 52.

236

advanced workers who were on the battle lines 战线 of statistical work.587

Their

testimonies were compiled for dissemination in the hope that they would, in turn, inspire

other statistical cadre to give free rein to their enthusiasm and creativity.

Conclusion

Given the PRC’s limited resources, the story of capacity building in the field of statistics

very quickly turned into one of how best to handle incapacity. Such incapacity

manifested itself in three successive areas. The first incapacity was reflected in the need

to build training infrastructure, both in terms of schools and training centers and in terms

of a statistical curriculum that could accommodate a very wide range of students. Indeed,

barring a small minority of cadre who had college or high-school level education, most

cadre were in their late teens with extremely limited education. A second incapacity was

characterized by an inability to train cadre in sufficient numbers and in a rapid enough

fashion. Finally, morale was another area in which the Statistics Bureau encountered

tremendous challenges. By mid-1950s, as work was stabilizing and the PRC had entered

the high point of its bureaucratic phase, the SSB could take stock of its achievements and

also start on activities like self-study and model-worker meetings. This chapter has

provided a sense of what the state aspired to do, how and where it fell short, where it

abnegated responsibility, and what kinds of actions it took to address that shortfall.

The consequences of some of the rhetorical flourishes one sees with regard to

statistics and numbers have already been traced in the previous chapter. In particular, the

fetishization of periodical reports—their being touted as the ‘product’ that statistical

587

BMA 035-002-00203: 7-9.

237

workers were laboring to produce—exacerbated what was already a pretty common

problem, the excess issuing of reports. As discussed in the previous chapter, the problem

became increasingly insurmountable as leaders in the SSB recognized that the very

system of periodical reports as much as their fetishization was responsible for masses of

paper and no way to actually deal with them.

238

CHAPTER VII

Statistical State, Quantified Society

239

By 1956, an integrated statistical system modeled on the Soviet Union had allowed for

unprecedented levels of penetration stretching down to the village level. With a staff of

about 650 personnel, the SSB, headquartered in Beijing, oversaw 200,000 statistical

cadre spread across provincial bureaus, roughly 2,200 county offices, and about 750,000

village cooperatives. The scope and nature of statistical data collected, putatively, not

only increases a state’s capacity to regulate society, but through the creation of new

categories also reflects its vision of social change.588

1950s China was marked by several

massive nationwide social engineering projects, such as cooperativization and

collectivization of agriculture, state take-over of the private sector, minority classification,

household registration and restriction of rural mobility, and perhaps most ambitiously,

economic planning.

Normally understood as top-down outcomes primarily of ideology, in this chapter

I offer a preliminary investigation of the role of statistics and statisticians in such

processes, taking as case studies economic planning and the institution of the work points

system in the countryside. In each case, the object is to demonstrate the centrality of

statistics to the conceptualization and execution of large scale social and economic

transformation. In the case of the first five-year plan, the consistent challenge was to

better coordinate the planning and statistical apparatuses of the state. Drawing upon

Beijing Planning and Statistical Bureau documents from 1954, I first show the

588

There is a large literature on this subject. See, for instance: Bernard Cohn. An Anthropologist among

Historians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990 (in particular pp. 224-254, on the Indian census); Ian

Hacking. “Biopower and the Avalanche of Printed Numbers.” Humanities in Society 5 (1982): 279–95; Ian

Hacking. “Making up People,” (Essay based on “Tenth Annual British Academy Lecture,” April 2006; the

full text of the lecture appeared in the Proceedings of the British Academy) London Review of Books,

August 17 (2006): 7-11; Martha Lampland and Susan Leigh Starr, eds. Standards and their Stories: How

Quantifying, Classifying, and Formalizing Practices Shapes Every Life. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University

Press, 2009; James C. Scott. Seeking Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition

Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998; and many others.

240

relationship between statistics and planning and between the statistics bureau and the

planning bureau, as it was understood during such an early an early stage of the plan. I

then move forward in time to 1958 and look at the discussion surrounding the impending

second five-year plan (1958-1962).

Even if, in the end, the plan was haphazard and not very plan-like in comparison

to other contemporary plans, the drive to plan and the idealization of total statistical

information that it was based upon wrought several changes in the country side. While

resistance to the state’s attempts to collect information and tax, the universal historical

pattern one would expect to find, was indeed one response, the creation of new forms of

statistical data and categories of accounting also resulted in numbers informing new

conceptions of everyday life and work. In the second half of the chapter I explore one

such instance: the work points system and the concomitant rise of what I term

enumerative consciousness.

The First Five-Year Plan and Statistics

In most standard (economic) histories of the 1950s, the decade is divided into three

periods: 1949 to 1952 is the period of recovery 恢复时期, 1953 to 1957 is the period of

the first five-year plan 第一个五年计划, and 1958-1962 is the period of the Great Leap

Forward 大跃进.589

The first five year plan thus occupies a central position in the decade,

temporally as well as in terms of its impact on China’s development. Even though it

589

Needless to say, variations on this theme exist. The original prospective formulation in 1949 had called

for “three years of recovery, then ten years of development.” (Riskin 1987: 53). 1949-1956 is also

frequently referred to as the period of transition 过渡时期, implying that by its end the three major socialist

transformations—of agriculture, handicrafts, and the capitalist economy—had largely been successfully

achieved. 1958-1962 would originally have been the period of the second five-year plan; the Great Leap

Forward put paid to those plans.

241

started in 1953, it was only after July 1955 that the plan itself was released as a

document.590

Over the years, general scholarly consensus has been that it was less a plan

in the strictest sense of the word and more a set of guidelines.591

As the economist (verify)

Audrey Donnithorne summarized in 1967:

China’s economic planning has been restricted mainly to the setting of

targets, to drawing up lists of resolutions. It does not attempt to effect

close integration of different economic sectors, nor is it much concerned

with the optimum allocation of resources. Throughout, and this can

scarcely be stressed too much, economic planning in China is constrained

by the deficiencies of the information on which it has to work, as well as

by the weaknesses in the administration and supervisory organs charged

with implementation of plans and with checking this implementation.”592

A significant component of the deficiencies of information that Donnithorne spoke of had

to do with the quality of statistical data. Writing twenty years later, Carl Riskin would

echo this assessment, noting that national economic planning could not proceed without

the “establishment of an elementary infrastructure, including planning and statistical

capacities.”593

590

This was done after Li Fuchun 李富春, Vice-Premier of the State Council and Chairman of the State

Planning Commission, delivered his address on July 5 and 6 1955 at the Second Session of the First

National People’s Congress in Beijing. The second part of Li’s speech is a full summary of the Plan. The

Foreign Language Press produced an official English translation of the speech by October of that year and a

full translation of the Five-Year Plan was issued in 1956 (First Five-Year Plan for Development of the

National Economy of the People’s Republic of China 1953-1957). For more, including the text of the 1955

Foreign Language Press publication, see: MacFarquhar, Roderick and John K. Fairbank, eds. The

Cambridge History of China, Vol. 14: The People's Republic, Part 1: The Emergence of Revolutionary

China, 1949-1965. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 42-91.

591

The first draft of the plan was rejected by Soviet advisors in the Soviet Union in 1952. The plan that was

subsequently approved focused primarily on the state-owned economy and favored industrial production

and capital construction; investment in agricultural production constituted an almost negligible proportion

of overall investment. I do not offer here a general discussion of the plan and its contents. Trenchant

discussions can be found in Riskin 1987: 53-60; Li Choh-Ming. Economic Development of Communist

China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959; Meisner1999.

592

Audrey Donnithorne. China’s Economic System. New York: Praeger, 1967, 457; cited in Orleans 1974:

51.

593

Riskin 1987: 53.

242

The importance of statistics to planning was stressed from the very earliest

discussions about building statistical and planning infrastructure but the relationship was

usually articulated in general terms. Recall Wang Sihua’s 1950 speech (from Chapter II),

wherein he stated that by establishing a system of socialist statistics, China was already

on the path toward a planned economy. A somewhat more precisely stated link between

the planning and statistics can be found in a document entitled “Written Answers to

Questions Concerning State Planning in China.” This document was prepared a few

months prior to Li Fuchun’s speech in July 1955 and delivered to the Indian Prime

Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) through the offices of Vice-Premier Chen Yun

陈云 (1905-1995). 594

According to the document, the plan was drawn up by working out

control figures, making a draft plan, and approving it for delivery to lower organs. Two

systems were critical to this process: the ‘administration under the central authority’ and

the ‘system of local administration.’ In the first step, the State Planning Commission

(SPC) worked out control figures for the whole nation. Upon the approval of the State

Administrative Council (SAC), these figures were sent down to the lower organs.595

At

this point, various ministries and local administrations would use these figures to draw up

their own draft plans and submit them for approval to the SAC, with copies also delivered

to the SPC. On the basis of these lower level draft plans, the SPC then revised the

594

The questionnaire had been prepared by P.C. Mahalanobis (more on him in Part III), who had requested

Nehru to present it to the Chinese on his official visit to the People’s Republic in 1954. Nehru had handed

the questionnaire to Vice-Premier Guo Moruo 郭沫若 (1892-1978) on October 22 1954. The Chinese

original of the document was translated into English by the Chinese Foreign Office and both documents

arrived in New Delhi (through the Indian Embassy in Beijing) by the end of April 1955. For more, see:

NAI _EA_FEA_10(48)-FEA/55: 1, 3.

595

Set up in 1952, the SPC came under the direct control of the State Administrative Council after the 1954

reorganization.

243

national draft plan.596

The process was recursive and relied on coordination across the

various administrative levels and with statistical organs:

The State Planning Commission maintains connections with local

administrators through the planning commissions of the provinces,

municipalities and autonomous regions. In addition to the planning

commissions of the provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions,

local planning organs, to be known as “planning and statistical sections”

are set up in the counties.597

(Original English translation)

At the lowest levels, planning and statistical functions were thus combined within a

single office. At the national level, the SPC’s principal partner was the State Statistics

Bureau (SSB). Both the SSB and the SPC came under the direct control of the SAC. To

quote the document: “the state takes the figures of the Statistical Bureau as base for

drawing up its plan, and reviews the execution of the plan on the strength of the figures of

the Statistical Bureau.”598

(Original English translation)

Much like Mao’s exhortation to “serve the people” 为人民服务, statistical work

thus had to “serve national planning” 统计工作要为国家计划服务. As a report on

Beijing’s Third Meeting on Statistical Work explained, such service involved three tasks.

The first task was the supply of correct data 首先应提供正确的资料. Second, analysis

and research was conducted on the correct data to discover problems 根据正确的资料进

行分析研究, 发现问题. Finally, based on the analysis, solutions to those problems were

suggested 提出解决问题的办法. The statistical numbers so produced were, in turn, the

basis for preparing plans 编制计划, inspecting plans 检查计划, deciding on policies 决

596

See: NAI _EA_FEA_10(48)-FEA/55: 4 (see p. 17 for Chinese version).

597

“计划统计科”; see: NAI _EA_FEA_10(48)-FEA/55: 4 (see p. 17 for Chinese version).

598

See: NAI _EA_FEA_10(48)-FEA/55: 4 (see p. 17 for Chinese version).

244

定政策, and for checking the implementation of those policies 检查政策执行情况. So,

for example, the statistics bureau could check the rate of industrialization 观察工业发展

速度, the rate of nationalization 公私比重变化, or formulate a variety of supply plans 制

定各种供应计划. The report argued that all these activities were important because they

were closely linked to national construction 国家建设, to production 生产事业, and to

the people’s lives 人民生活.599

Given the need for statistics to work closely with planning what was the reality on

the ground? At the level of the central headquarters of each organization, coordination

appears to have been the de facto norm. Such coordination was no doubt facilitated by the

fact that both the State Statistics Bureau and the State Planning Commission were located

on different floors of the same building in Beijing. But if we take the example of

statistical and planning work at the city level, things are less clear. According to materials

connected with Beijing’s Third Meeting on Statistical Work in 1954, of the 114

sanctioned attendees to the meeting, only five were from the planning bureau.600

The rest

were statistical cadres spread across forty-five units 单位 and key factories and mines 重

点厂矿. On first glance, these numbers indicate that the Beijing Planning Bureau’s input

in statistical work was limited. But when the total number of cadre at the Beijing

Planning Bureau is taken into account (forty-one), we find that a significant portion of the

Planning Bureau was actually in attendance (roughly twelve percent; or five out of forty-

one). In order to investigate further the relationship between the two bureaus further, let

599

BMA004-010-00807: 81.

600

BMA 004-010-00807: 9. The post-meeting report stated that in reality there were as many as 148

attendees and over sixty observers. See: BMA 004-010-00807: 80.

245

us therefore consider the annual work summaries 工作总结 for 1953 of the Beijing

Planning and Statistics Bureaus.

Reflections on Planning and Statistics, 1952-1958

A summary report of statistical work carried out in 1953 in Beijing was prepared by the

Beijing Statistics Bureau in April 1954.601

The report stated that there were 3,829 full-

time and part-time cadre involved in statistical work in Beijing.602

Over the course of

1953, some major improvements were made in the timeliness of reports and in ensuring

that numerical data were accompanied by textual explanations 文字说明.603

At the same

time, most of the issues discussed in Part II Chapter II above, such as duplication, chaotic

reporting, etc., were also pointed out in the report. One of the reports five sections

(section three) was devoted to a discussion of the bureau’s contribution to planning work.

The section on planning began by observing that the bureau had provided

statistical data to the leadership to help them draw up plans and decide on policies. For

instance, in July of 1953, under the leadership of the Finance Committee, the bureau had

compiled and consolidated annual reports for every year from 1949 to 1952 to aid in

long-term planning. In the few cases where data was not available, they had provided

estimates. These materials were then cross-checked by various relevant ministries and

organs and printed in booklet form 印成册. In order to supply data needed for drawing up

a plan for 1954, the bureau had also provided forecast figures for 1953. Data was also

601

See: BMA 004-008-00291: 9-22. For earlier drafts of this report, see: BMA 004-011-00034: 13-22, 24-

42.

602

See: BMA 004-008-00291: 16.

603

See: BMA 004-008-00291: 11.

246

provided to aid policy decisions and carry out key tasks 中心工作. For example, in order

to research the relative magnitudes of the private and public economy, the bureau

provided quarterly data on the share of the commercial economy. In similar fashion,

Beijing’s population was verified so that the state monopoly for the purchase and

marketing of grain could be effectively implemented. Data on average wages and labor

productivity were also provided in order to facilitate research into the problem of

wages .604

Even though the bureau felt that its various offerings had substantially met

contemporary planning requirements, it acknowledged that shortcomings nonetheless

remained. For starters, the bureau admitted that it was not good at utilizing statistical

numbers from all possible sources, ignoring in particular statistical data from the

administrative and professional departments 业务部门. Even in those cases where a

mastery of all the numbers had been achieved, the data was often not fully utilized.605

A

second concern was that specific needs were not addressed directly. Problems were

discovered and the leadership informed only once data had been consolidated. As a result,

even though the data provided to the leadership was plentiful, it played a limited role in

decision-makin.606

What did the Planning Bureau’s annual summary of work for 1953 say about

statistics? Drafted in January of 1954, the annual summary noted that the Beijing

Planning Bureau had officially been set up on October 21 1953 and had more than forty-

604

See: BMA 004-008-00291: 13.

605

“See: BMA 004-008-00291: 14.

606

See: BMA 004-008-00291: 14.

247

one cadre distributed across departments responsible for planning in industry, agriculture,

infrastructure, trade, health and education, as well as five others.607

The Bureau received

its instructions from the State Planning Commission, the City Committee, the City

Finance Committee, and the city government. Its tasks were to examine, consolidate, and

balance long-term, annual, and seasonal plans for local industry, agriculture, trade

cooperatives, capital construction, health and education, and wages using data obtained

from the statistics bureau.608

The report went on to note that planning work had suffered on account of three

reasons. Leaders had been unable to focus on the organization of planning because they

were busy with the state purchasing monopoly on food grains. The planners also

encountered problems with the quality of index numbers and often did not get corrected

numbers delivered to them on time. Finally, they complained about inadequate numbers

of cadre and their poor overall training.609

Neither statistics nor statistical work was

directly mentioned, and yet two of the three problems they listed were essentially

statistical in nature. It was only later in the year, that the SPC directly addressed the issue

of planning and statistics on a national level.

On August 24 1954, the State Planning Commission passed a set of

regulations/provisions 规定, which directly addressed the relationship between planning

and statistics. “Regarding Uniform Provisions for a number of Problems [Encountered] in

Planning and Statistical Work” was a six-page document that was sent to all central

committees, departments, institutes, and to the statistics and planning bureaus of every

607

BMA 004-011-00034: 1-6.

608

BMA 004-011-00034: 2.

609

BMA 004-011-00034: 3.

248

province and municipality.610

Additionally, copies were delivered to all units of the

planning commission and to the State Statistics Bureau offices in Beijing.611

The

document noted that problems existed both at the systemic level and at the level of

coordination. Coordination between Planning Units and Statistics Units, in particular,

was frequently inconsistent. Such inconsistency, in turn, affected the calculation and

meaning of specific indicators. Furthermore, subordinate planning and statistics

departments often did not strictly enforce the SPC and SSB’s jointly issued regulations,

or they habitually supplemented these regulations with their own contradictory

regulations. Such ad hoc localized decision-making included changing a planning unit’s

affiliations and economic structures without consultation.612

Finally, a single unit

frequently possessed multiple sets of planning numbers and did not clearly specify which

set was to form the basis for checking plan implementation. The consequence was that

statistical work and planning work at any given level were disjointed. Duplication of data

and the chaotic nature of statistical work adversely affected the quality of planning work.

In order to resolve these problems of coordination, the SPC proposed five

provisions. First, they insisted upon greater cooperation and understanding between the

planning and statistics offices. At every level of administration, the statistics office must

be in compliance with the corresponding planning committee. It was the statistics office’s

responsibility to provide, examine, and approve all basic data needed for planning. This

structure was to be replicated at all levels from the province down to the county. In order

610

BMA 004-011-00255: 1-7.

611

It notes that copies were also delivered to (SSB?) Committee members 张、按、韩 and to 王副秘书长.

612

BMA 004-011-00255: 2.

249

for this to work in practice, planning departments were required to make their requests

for statistical data well in advance of their use date, so that statistical activity could be

properly planned and the data delivered in a timely fashion.613

The second provision focused on problems with indicators, stressing that their

meaning and the methods used to calculate and classify them should all be in agreement

across statistics and planning work. Without such commensurability, it would be

impossible to produce any meaningful comparisons. Where planning guidelines already

existed, they were to be used to rationalize the indicators. Similarly, if in places the only

guidelines were statistical ones, then they were to serve as the basis for the rationalization.

And if neither statistical nor planning guidelines were available, then representatives

from both statistical and planning offices were required to work together and devise

mutually agreeable ones. In case of any special conditions or problems, the opinion of

both the SSB and SPC had to be sought. Under no circumstances were local officials

supposed to act before obtaining the SPC and the SSB’s approval. In general, indicators

were to be calculated based on the following SSB catalogs and classification schemes:

i. Catalog of Industrial Products

ii. Catalog of Agricultural Products

iii. Fixed Prices for Agricultural and Industrial Products

iv. Industrial Sector Categories

v. Classification of Workers and Wages

If planning or statistics offices at any subordinate level considered a particular calculation

method or categorization of indicator required improvement, they had to seek the joint

613

BMA 004-011-00255: 3.

250

approval of the SSB and the SPC. And as noted above, they were not to take any action

prior to obtaining such approval.614

Among the key tasks for statistical organs was checking the rate of plan

implementation. Accordingly, the third provision stressed the need for statistics reporting

units and summary (comprehensive) units to be in compliance with planning units.

In particular, the planning units that fell within the National Economic Plan (NEP) were

required to use the SSB’s periodical reports and survey estimates. Any changes in the

relationship between planning units or in economic type again could only be carried out

in consultation with both the SPC and the SSB and all catalogs used by planning units

had to be copied to statistics offices.615

For statistics to effectively aid drafting of plans and to track their implementation,

the fourth provision focused on the unifying the methods of plan implementation. In all

cases, nationally approved numbers were to be used. So, for instance, when checking the

implementation of a particular annual plan, the National Annual Plan was to serve as the

basis for comparison. Similarly, when checking quarterly plans, quarterly numbers were

to be drawn from the National Annual Plan and used as the basis for comparison. If such

numbers did not exist, corresponding quarterly figures from the next higher level were to

be used. In the case of monthly plans for grassroots industries, the quarterly plan of the

superior administrative unit was to be broken into monthly estimates and used. As with

earlier provisions, any major changes or corrections could only be made after obtaining

614

BMA 004-011-00255: 3-4.

615

BMA 004-011-00255: 4-5.

251

approval. In the absence of any approval, the units were to continue using the older

[incorrect] numbers and copy all results to the statistics division.616

The final provision reiterated the relative administrative ranking of planning and

statistical units. At every level planning had to provide leadership to statistical work.

Cadres from both units were required to periodically meet and discuss statistical work, so

that day-to-day work was better and more closely coordinated. In addition, cadres from

each unit were required to attend each other’s work meetings and when necessary, to

jointlyreport and discuss their work with the central government.617

Reading against the grain, these five provisions as well as the annual reports for

1953 from the Beijing planning and statistics bureaus suggest that in the first year of the

five-year plan there was limited and poor communication between planning and statistics

activities. Planning and statistics offices frequently operated on an ad hoc basis,

calculating their own indicators without appropriate approval, thereby adding to the

cacophony of data and analyses. The relatively skewed numbers of personnel for Beijing,

where a little over forty-one planning cadre had to coordinate their work with nearly

4,000 statistical cadres, is also suggestive of how difficult it must have been for the

planning organs to provide leadership and oversight of statistical organs. Oversight by the

planning organs also meant that statistical organs were under two different authorities—

people’s committees (as discussed in Chapter V) and planning committees. In many

instances, and especially at the local level, there may have existed significant overlap in

personnel between the two. But even so, administratively they were different and

therefore could easily be the source of different and possibly contradictory requests as far

616

BMA 004-011-00255: 5-6.

617

BMA 004-011-00255: 6.

252

as the statistical units were concerned. In spite of these difficulties, however (and perhaps

remarkably), the SSB did produce annual reports on economic development and plan

implementation for every year during the first five-year plan.

Even though the problems plaguing statistics and planning were accurately

assessed by 1954, their resolution remained elusive over the following years. A notice

issued jointly by the SPC and the SSB in April 1958 repeated many items from the 1954

provisions just discussed and indicates that many problems remained unresolved even at

the end of the first five-year plan.618

At the same time, developments during the four

years since 1954 had also generated new challenges. The 1958 notice remarked that in

keeping pace with expansions in the scope 口径 [lit. aperture] of annual plans, the range

of statistical work had also expanded every year. As a result, statistical work had

surpassed the scope 口径 of the first five-year plan. For example, in the case of

investment in infrastructure, the five-year plan did not include investments in the military

commission, in the bureau for the management of government offices, nor in

administrative departments. However, such investments were all part of individual annual

plans by the end of the first five-year period. In similar fashion, the five-year plan for

geological surveying did not include several items labeled infrastructure investment that

were included within annual plans or in the plans of individual departments.

Continuing differences in the classification methods used by statistical and

planning organs also resulted in inconsistencies. For example, the sown area for tobacco

土烟 and for different kinds of hemp and flex (Cannabis Hemp 大麻; Velvet Leaf 青麻;

and Kenaf 羊麻) was included in the five-year plan. However, in regular statistical work,

618

BMA 005-001-000298: 1-6.

253

which was more attuned to the requirements of annual plans, they were listed within the

sown area for technical crops 技术作物. In another example, the five-year plan did not

include tubers 薯类, the finances of food supply,619

and catering 饮食业用 in its figures

for retail sales of food commodities 粮食商品零售量. These were included, however, in

the annual statistical figures. Finally, there were quite a few indicators whose calculations

methods were not consistent. For instance, the indicator for food did not include data for

soybeans and indicators of infrastructure investment in agriculture, forestry, or water

management did not include investment data from the forest industry. 620

Much like in 1954, the SSB and SPC again recommended a slew of measures to

try and combat these problems. In those instances where the scope of statistics exceeded

that of planning, they recommended that the results be publicly announced, without

correcting for the differences. This was particularly acceptable when the expansion in

scope was more-or-less offset by the reduction in prices or other factors, such as in the

case of infrastructure investment.621

In those cases where the scope of planning exceeded

that of statistics, the statistical data needed to be adjusted by making appropriate

estimations, with the caveat that the adjustments could be avoided if the differences were

small and did not affect claims about the overall completion of the plan. On the question

of inconsistencies in classification, the SPC and the SSB now called for planning

categories to take precedence over statistical ones.

619

Need to verify this; possible error in transcription or in original.

620

BMA 005-001-000298: 3.

621

BMA 005-001-000298: 3.

254

The notice recognized that changes in the scope of the plan were sometimes made

during the implementation process itself through a variety of actions, such as increasing

or decreasing the number of construction units. Under such circumstances, instead of

constantly revising plans, the notice asked that such changes be carefully recorded so that

once the plan was completed the figures could be compared to the original plan figures.

Furthermore, because the nature of the economy underwent substantial change during the

plan period, when analyzing plan completion rates, it was best to use annual statistical

data, since the planning data may not be commensurable for different years.622

It was

with such considerations in mind that discussions about the second five year plan were

undertaken. In late 1957 most provincial statistics bureaus drew up their own research

plans. The Fujian Bureau, for instance, listed thirty-two questions ranging from analysis

of various aspects of the first five-year plan to discussions about changes necessary for

the next plan.623

Work Points

Even though agriculture was not the central thrust of planning, over the course of the

decade the party-state progressively nationalized land, reorganized social relations in the

countryside, and instituted a universal system of wages that fundamentally reshaped rural

China. Statistics and quantification were at the heart of these changes. Measuring

agricultural labor, in particular, developed into an increasingly important task as the state

increasingly became not just the sole purveyor but also the sole provider of people’s

622

BMA 005-001-000298: 3-4.

623

BMA 133-001-00091: 43-45. Similar lists were produced by the Xi’an Statistics Bureau, the Inner

Mongolia Statistics Bureau, and many others. See: BMA 133-001-00091: 49, 63-34.

255

incomes. The principal method of keeping track of income earned through the

performance of labor was the work-points system. The work-points system quantified

every aspect of rural life by classifying every activity within the rural economy in terms

of the number of points needed to perform it. Putatively, every activity was thus reduced

to single number, accounted for on a daily basis. As a result, people’s relationship to

numbers changed in new and fundamental ways.

The Work-Point System 工分制, also known as the Labor-Day System 劳动日制,

was a system of quantifying daily labor and allocating consumer goods in the rural

countryside throughout most of the Mao era.624

According to Huang Yingwei 黄英伟, the

concept of evaluating (someone’s) work and recording that evaluation in terms of points

评工记分 was presumably in use before 1949.625

The first documentary evidence of the

use of the phrase “evaluate work and record points” can be found in a mid-1950 report in

China Agricultural Report 《中国农报》. By July of 1952, three methods for estimating

a labor day had been proposed. In the first case, work points were preset and work was

assigned based on those ratings. In the second case, work points for a task were

predetermined 预定 but the actual assignment of points was carried out after the work

had been completed by a democratic reckoning. Finally, the third method called for the

624

See: Huang Yingwei 黄英伟. “Gongfenzhi de zhidu jingjixue fenxi 公分制的制度经济学分析

(Analysis of the Institional Economics of the Work-Point System).” Ershiyi shiji shuangyue kan 二十一世

纪双月刊, no. 131 (June 2012): 87-96.; and Huang Yingwei 黄英伟 Gongfenzhi xia de nonghu laodong 工

分制下的农户劳动 (Rural Labour under the Work-Point System. Beijing: China Agriculture Press, 2012,

44-70. Much the discussion that follows, draws upon Huang’s work. A useful contemporary source is:

Andrew Nathan. “China’s Work-Point System: A Study in Agricultural “Splittism.” Current Scene—

Developments in Mainland China 2, no. 31, (April 15, 1964): 1-13.. Also see: Peter Schran. The

Development of Chinese Agriculture, 1950-1959. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1969, pp. 30-32. For

a description of work points during the 1960s and later, see: Mobo C.F. Gao. Gao Village—A Portrait of

Rural Life in Modern China. London: Hurst and Company, 1999, 61-63.

625

Huang 2012a: 88; Huang 2012b: 45.

256

implementation of a system where quality, quantity, and the nature of work were all

contractually fixed. These three systems would in later years be dubbed as ‘fixed points,

fixed valuation’ 死分死评; ‘fixed points, negotiable valuation’ 死分活评; and ‘fixed

labor’ 定额工.626

Sporadic discussions about these methods and their employment in

tracking daily labor continued over the following few years.627

At this early stage, when

mutual aid teams were the norm, “work points were used to keep track of the work put in

by Farmer A on the plot of Farmer B, so that the latter could reciprocate fairly accurately,

in accordance with the principle of “exchanging work for work”.628

Points were thus

based solely on time, and did not distinguish between different types of work and their

relative physical and mental requirements. Furthermore, as an exchange purely of labor,

work points were not income in the strict sense.629

It was not until November 9 1955, however, that a formal definition and

interpretation were authorized by the Standing Committee of the National People's

Congress at its twenty-fourth meeting. From that point on, the work points system

became a system of wages, operating on the principle: “calculate payment based on labor;

the greater the labor the greater the gain” 按劳计酬、多劳多得.630

A work day 工作日

was calculated as the quantity and quality of work that could be performed by a medium

(average) amount of labor 中等的劳动力, taking into account a variety of factors such as

626

Huang 2012b: 46. The first two have been understood as ‘time-work’ and ‘piece-work’ in English

language scholarship. Cf. Nathan 1964: 2.

627

See: Huang 2012b: 46-47.

628

Nathan 1964: 3.

629

Nathan 1964: 3.

630

Huang 2012a: 88; Huang 2012b: 47-48.

257

the nature of work, the quality of land, farm animals, agricultural tools, daylight hours 天

时, etc.631

One such work day was equal to ten work points 工分.632

The following year, at the end of June, the transition from lower-state

cooperatives to higher-stage cooperatives was initiated and all land was moved into

collective ownership.633

Unlike in the previous period of lower-stage cooperatives, when

land had remained privately owned even as it was collectively worked, this stage

witnessed the quantification of every possible activity through what is known as the

‘piece-work’ system.634

Accordingly, all forms of jobs were considered and rates were

established for each in terms of work points. So, for instance, ploughing wheat could be

worth 10 points per mu 亩, threshing it 9 points per mu, collecting manure 8 points per

ton, and so on.635

Income from personal land was thus no longer possible and one’s entire

earnings were based on wages calculated as work points.

Enumerative Consciousness

From the state’s perspective, a work-point system allowed for a degree of control over

the harvest that payment in direct monetary terms would have made much more difficult.

As Andrew Nathan explained:

If wages are expressed in money terms, the State would be

committed to certain expenditure in farmer’s wages; but with work 631

Huang 2012b: 47.

632

For a more detailed discussion of the various labor grades that were applied, based on gender, skill, and

other criteria, see: Nathan 1964: 4; Huang 2012b: 50-57.

633

Huang 2012b: 48.

634

Nathan 1964: 2..

635

For a table of various jobs connected with farming wheat 小麦 see: Huang 2012b: 55-56.

258

points, the money value is only known after State procurement.

Then the total number of work points earned on the team is divided

into the total value to be distributed to arrive at the value of each

work point. Meanwhile, the farmer has competed with others to get

more points only in order to get a higher proportion of the

distribution ultimately allotted by the State.636

Monetary reckoning was usually done at the time of the Lunar Festival. Therefore, for

much of the year work-points retained their abstract, purely numerical value. Even so, the

rhetoric behind work points was very much one of emancipation from earlier feudal

structures of state extraction. If in the pre-modern and early-modern past, statistics was a

tool whereby the state and gentry taxed and oppressed peasants, then in the new China it

was the tool of a munificent state that ensured the well-being of peasants and the

development of the nation as a whole. In a section titled “The Abacus Clicks” in Lu Qi’s

1963 poem “Willow Village Revisited,” this transformation is captured through the

changing role of the abacus.

…This abacus started clicking early:

That year we staged the struggle,

It computed exploitation, added up lost lives,

Click, clack, click, clack…

It’s the thousands of rifles firing salvos,

And the battle drums thundering together;

It added and added until

Heaven and earth turned over and man changed his fate!

It kept clicking till today, and today

It no longer computes the rent, but work points.

Yesterday it figured out whose hate was the strongest

Today it tells us whose love is the deepest.

Listen now, listen!

Throb the thousands of communers’ hearts.637

636

Nathan 1964: 2

637

Lu Ch’i 陸棨 (Lu Qi). “Willow Village Revisited.” In Literature of the People’s Republic of China,

edited by : Hsu Kai-yu, 729. Bloomington and London: Indian University Press, 1980. Originally published

in Poetry Journal, no. 3 (1963): 4-7.

259

The abacus was a tool that originally calculated what peasants owed an extractive state

and gentry. During Land Reform it became a tool in overturning the feudal order. It

helped assess the value of that same extraction by quantifying the scale of exploitation so

that peasants could be reimbursed through accurately calculated land redistribution. And

shortly thereafter, even such harsh duties were set aside: “it no longer computes the rent,

but work points.” Work points thus became indicators of peace and prosperity for all and

were crucial to the social and economic transformation of the country-side.

Attitudes toward work points also pointed to whether one whole-heartedly

supported the ongoing cooperativization. In Ma Feng’s “I Knew Three Years Ago,” a

story written in the late 1950s but which was set earlier in the decade, the chief

protagonist Uncle Chao (Man-tun) is portrayed as a “smart cookie” who had a difficult

time adjusting to the cessation of his private commercial activities and the forfeiture of

his assets, both of which were done to further the communal interests of the cooperative.

Fretting over work points was one way in which his disgruntlement manifested itself:

“Huh! Me grabbing for work points! Who doesn’t want to earn a few more

work-day credits? You keep saying the co-op is your family. Why don’t

you labor just for the co-op then? Or, “Even if you grew gold from the

ground, if you don’t earn any work-day credit, you could stare till your

eyes pop out and still have no share in it!”638

A little later in the story, Uncle Chao’s wife confides in the author, noting that his

attitude has improved:

She paused and then said, “It’s much better now. For the past few years,

our share at the end of the year has never been less than what we would

638

Ma Feng 马烽. “San nian qian zao zhidao 三年前早知道 (I Knew Three Years Ago).” In Literature of

the People’s Republic of China, 565. Bloomington and London: Indian University Press, 1980. Translation

based upon version published in: A Bumper Crop of Short Stories, Beijing: 1959.

260

get if we worked on our own [land]. This has put his mind at ease.

Nowadays, he only adds up his work points every few days…639

That Uncle Chao was only adding up his work points “every few days” is suggestive of

how people may have fixated on their daily point tally as they sought to keep track of not

just their own work points but also of their fellow co-op members. Both these literary

examples thus point to the importance of work points as an increasingly pervasive and

foundational element of life in the countryside. This impression is also reflected in

reports sharing positive work experience that were filed by village level statistical

workers.

On April 18 1956, the Beijing Statistics Bureau sent out a notification to all

bureaus/departments, communes, and associations within the city to begin making

preparations for the city’s [and nation’s?] first Activist Statistical Workers Meeting 统计

工作经济发展大会.640

Held the following month from May 24 to 26, the meeting

summarized and disseminated model work experience in statistics.641

In all, about 300

statistical cadres from fifty-three departments, bureaus, and administrative units

participated in the meeting.642

Among the at least twenty statements delivered at the

meeting were two that focused on work in agricultural statistics.643

In each case, work

points were central to the statistical cadre’s testimony.

639

Ma Feng 1980: 566.

640

BMA 035-002-00203: 2-11.

641

BMA 035-002-00203: 15.

642

Of these, a significant number—a little over a fourth—were involved in industrial work. Three hundred

was the sanctioned number. The actual numbers may have been different. See: BMA 035-002-00203: 7-9.

643

BMA 035-002-00203: 41-46, 73-75.

261

The first statement was made by Yang Shi’en 杨世恩, who was the statistician of

the Number Nine Team of the Czech Agricultural Cooperative 中捷友好农业社 in the

suburbs of Beijing.644

Yang was a graduate at the higher-primary level and during school

would often listen to talks introducing Soviet collective farming and the happy lives of its

members. Deeply influenced by them, he decided to volunteer in agricultural production.

After graduating in 1953, he decided to put down his book bag and joined the village’s

Tile Production Group 本乡的农业生产瓦助组.645

That same winter, Zhanglin

Township 张邻庄乡 started to build a cooperative and he was sent (by the cooperative) to

study agricultural technology. Upon returning, he was assigned the dual tasks of co-op

statistician and technician. Even though he was initially concerned he didn’t have the

ability to take care of statistical work, encouragement from his Team Leader Guo Baojin

郭保金 assuaged those fears.646

Yang encountered many difficulties during the first few months of statistical work

at the cooperative. He discovered that the data being collected were completely unable to

meet both the needs of the periodical reports that were reported up as well as the more

local needs of the team and cooperative leaders. In many instances data was not freely

provided; in those instances when it was, much of it appeared to be based upon

estimation 估计. Yang proceeded to offer an example: while calculating the area under

cotton he asked the Team Leader, “How many mu 亩 have you planted?” The Team

644

Yang’s was the fifth statement in the compilation. The following paragraphs are drawn directly from his

statement, the text of which can be found in: BMA 035-002-00203: 41-46.

645

BMA 035-002-00203: 42.

646

“At that time I was quite afraid. I would think: one, I cannot calculate; two, I cannot remember (things),

how will I be able to do statistical work?” See: BMA 035-002-00203: 42.

262

Leader replied, “Roughly 17 or 18 mu.” “Exactly how many,” Yang persisted. He replied:

“You can write 17.5!”647

In similar fashion, no exact estimates of the amount of wheat

sown or land under wheat cultivation existed. As a result, numbers couldn’t be

successfully recorded and even when they were, the data recorded and the reality were

frequently at odds with each other.

Yang discovered that work points were recorded in an especially chaotic manner.

And unlike other kinds of data, their improper recording generated a tremendous amount

of tension among members of the cooperative. To demonstrate this phenomenon, Yang

recalled the case of an old cooperative member 老大爸 whose points had been under-

recorded. The old man had furiously accosted Yang, saying: "Right now the land does

not ___, [only] through these [points] can we eat and drink. [If] you forget it [recording

work-points] it's okay [for you], [but] for me each point is my very lifeblood."648

Yang

found himself deeply troubled by such accusations, which he had to admit were true. But

how, then, was one to apportion work points properly? The problem came to occupy him

completely: “even food [I] was unable to eat; if [I] wanted to sleep [I] was unable to

sleep.”649

In the end, it was Old Man Guo’s 郭大爸 statement that each point was his

very lifeblood 纷纷就是命根 that made Yang resolve to improve the quality of statistical

work. Work points, he recognized, lay at the root of everything: “if work points are

647

BMA 035-002-00203: 42.

648

See: BMA 035-002-00203: 43.

649

BMA 035-002-00203: 43.

263

recorded well, then not only will that influence the life and production of the masses, but

it will also influence the correctness of statistical materials.”650

And so, he decided to work on improving his understanding of the relationship

between work points and business and accounting calculations at the cooperative. During

the spring planting season in 1955, Yang sought out the production team leaders to

discuss and devise an improved system of recording work points and related statistical

data. Based on these discussions, he devised a system whereby two types of data were

simultaneously recorded. On the one hand, he accurately recorded each worker’s work

points. On the other hand, he recorded in numeric terms the daily value of each worker’s

completed farm work, such as plowing the land, sowing, removing pests, spreading

manure, etc. This data was compiled into a daily interim summary. Every ten days, he

would produce a full summary, which he would send to the county office. Yang

explained that such a system allowed him to judge whether the allocation of work points

was reasonable. In addition, he was now also able to assess in a more timely fashion the

progress being made in production. His daily and ten-day reports had also improved the

timeliness of statistical data—once members of the cooperative had reported to their

teams, it only took him a day to produce summary reports on such things as amount of

cultivated land or the number of livestock.

Yang also compiled a couple of production handbooks 生产手册 for the team

based on the production plans of the work team.651

These handbooks covered such things

as how much area should be allocated for different crops, instructions for calculating how

650

BMA 035-002-00203: 43.

651

BMA 035-002-00203: 44.

264

much human and animal labor were required per mu of land and how much fertilizer to

use per mu. In addition, he also delineated every job’s work point assignment. He gave

copies of each handbook to leaders of small teams. In this way, team leaders were able to

effectively and efficiently calculate each workers daily work points. Yang asserted that

such changes in practice not only helped reduce production losses, they also helped avoid

the nightly wastage of time when everyone gathered to discuss the allocation of work

points. The small-team-leader was so pleased with the outcome that he went to the extent

of giving Yang’s handbook the epithet ‘teacher’ 老师.652

The second statement was filed by Liu Changming 刘长明, the statistician of the

Number Seven Work Team of the Heping Agricultural Production Cooperative 和平农业

生产合作社, located in Heping Village 和平乡 in the Eastern Suburbs of Beijing 东郊

区.653

In 1954, Liu had left the Army and returned to the village and begun participation

in agricultural work. The following year he took on the joint responsibilities of cashier 出

纳 and work points recorder 记工 for the South Lake Drainage Cooperative 南湖渠社.654

At that time, Liu noted that the entire team’s work point distribution had not been

checked for errors in a very long time. In order to correct this state of affairs, he focused

on professional learning and worked with his subordinates so that all work-point

recorders became comfortable with how to record work points. He taught all work point

recorders in the cooperative and firmly established in their minds the importance of their

work. In addition, whenever a meeting was organized, he would ask leaders of the

652

BMA 035-002-00203: 44.

653

Li’s statement was the eleventh in the compilation. The following paragraphs are drawn directly from

his statement, the text of which can be found in: BMA 035-002-00203: 73-75.

654

BMA 035-002-00203: 74.

265

cooperative to invite other leaders to participate. This raised the meeting’s profile and

made all attendees participate more seriously. Such a strategy had the added benefit of

solving on-the-spot any difficulties that arose.

In keeping with the Mass Line, Liu stressed that recording work points must also

rely on the leadership of the masses. He would frequently go down to the grass-roots

level to understand the actual problems that work-points recorders faced and helped them

solve their problems. Liu also set up a team-wide system of mutual checks and

comparisons. Good practices would receive praise, and the bad ones were criticized.

Every ten days the work-point recorders and the members of the cooperative got together

to reconcile labour manuals so that there was no incongruity between the logging of work

points and the actual work that had been carried out. Every month, after reconciling with

the entire team, Liu and his fellow points recorders also put together a work points

account book .The recorders also took advantage of days and times when inclement

weather made farm work impossible and organized fora 座谈会 where work-point

recorders could jointly study methods for recording work points, share experience, and

thereby improve the quality of their work. It was as a result of such measures that the

recording of work points was no longer error prone.

The institution of work points thus served to invert the relationship to numeracy

that we may have come to expect. As the power of the state expanded enormously over

the past few centuries, scholars such as James Scott have located modes and sites of

resistance to state intrusion.655

In a recent workshop paper, Jacob Eyferth sought to add to

Scott’s strategies of ‘a-literacy’ and ‘a-historicity’ by proposing ‘a-numeracy’: not

655

See in particular, James C. Scott. The Art of Not Being Governed—An Anarchist History of Upland

Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.

266

knowing how to count was a way of keeping the state at bay during the tumultuous

transformations taking of 1950s China.656

At the same time, the discussion of work-points

in this chapter indicates that as higher-stage cooperatives became the de facto reality in

the rural countryside, a-numeracy may have transformed into a new form of enumerative

consciousness. As every day was reduced to a single nominal digit which represented

one’s entire income, it became increasingly impossible to claim ignorance or disinterest

vis-à-vis numbers and quantification.

Conclusion

Socialist statistics was central to both the way in which the state approached planning and

to the changes that were wrought in the countryside. Complete statistical information

demanded unmatched levels of cooperation and data sharing across all levels of the

planning and statistical apparatus, even as at the grass-roots level the impetus to quantify

each and every basic activity in the rural country-side generated enormous social tensions

as numbers in the most basic form of work points came to occupy an increasingly central

position in the lives of peasants.

656

Jacob Eyferth. “Learning to Count, Learning Not to Be Counted: Numbers, Governance, and Resistance

in Rural China.” Unpublished Paper Presented at the Workshop on “Nation and Enumeration in Modern

China,” Columbia University, New York, 26 October 2013.

267

PART III

ALTERNATIVES

268

CHAPTER VIII

The Turn to India:

Sino-Indian Statistical Exchanges, 1951-1959

269

Sunday, 9 December 1956. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai’s visit to the Indian Statistical

Institute (ISI) in Calcutta had not gone entirely according to schedule. The original

itinerary called for a visit of half an hour. Strenuous protestations by P.C. Mahalanobis,

the ISI’s director, had resulted in a further 45 minutes being granted. But the Premier’s

party arrived almost a half hour late, throwing the carefully planned schedule into

disarray. Various items on the agenda had to be jettisoned.657

Zhou himself did not help

matters by getting deeply involved in several displays, asking questions, seeking

clarifications. In the National Sample Survey Unit, he sat down on a table and refused to

move until his questions had been satisfactorily answered. By the time he finally emerged

out in the open, several minutes behind schedule, the West Bengal officials including the

Chief Minister Dr. B.C. Roy, who had accompanied Zhou through his tour of the Institute,

were all in a hurry to depart. Suddenly, Zhou caught hold of Mahalanobis’ arm, “side-

stepped the waiting car, waved his hand to shake off everyone,” and took him aside.

“What are the countries most advanced in statistics? Are you in touch with them?”

Zhou inquired. Mahalanobis listed the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet

Union, noting further that while they had been in touch with all three, it was not desirable

to copy from any country and that “in India we are trying to adopt and develop the

methods to suit our own needs.” Zhou nodded his head in vigorous approval. He

observed that a group of Chinese statisticians would be visiting the ISI very soon. “I want

them to see everything in detail. We want to learn from you. How long should they

stay?..I shall tell them to stay as long as you think it advisable...Also, we want to send

research scholars to work here. What is the kind of men who should come?” Mahalanobis

657

The program for his visit included short speeches on the grounds of the Institute, where Zhou also

planted a Mango tree, before proceeding to various departments. For details see: Chinese Foreign Ministry

Archives (WJB) 203-00084-01: 118.

270

told Zhou that he wanted a mix of types, some advanced and some with good experience

of practical work. He also wanted an economist or two who could share China’s planning

experiences. Zhou again approved. “Yes, we must have exchange of men.” On the

question of how long the research scholars should stay at the ISI, Mahalanobis suggested

a period of at least six months and preferably one year, with some staying longer as

necessary. Zhou was determined: “We shall arrange this. I shall tell them that they should

consult you, and you should make the final decision.” He concluded the conversation by

taking Mahalanobis’ two hands in his and stating very firmly: “And next year in

Peking.”658

The exchange may have had a redemptive quality for Mahalanobis. For long, he

had tried to engage with the Chinese on matters of planning and statistics, only to be

rebuffed. But now, things seemed different. And Zhou’s urgency was real, the results

tangible. On December 11, 1956, just two days after Zhou Enlai’s visit, a team of

Chinese statisticians arrived at the ISI. Ostensibly to participate in the silver jubilee

celebrations of the Institute, they stayed for a month. Led by one of deputy directors of

the State Statistics Bureau (SSB) whom we have already encountered in Part I, Wang

Sihua, the four-person delegation also included the noted demographer, statistician, and

People’s University professor, Dai Shiguang 戴世光 (1908-1999). Within months of

returning to Beijing, deliberations over inviting Mahalanobis to China began. “And next

year in Peking,” did indeed become a reality. Mahalanobis, accompanied by his wife and

by the statistician D.B. Lahiri, spent three weeks in China during the months of June and

July 1957. The two statisticians lectured to large audiences at the Planning Commission,

658

P.C. Mahalanobis Memorial Museum & Archives (PCMMMA), Correspondence with Shri Pitambar

Pant File No. 915, 1953-56: 11-12.

271

Statistics Bureau and various universities, held numerous small group discussions with

statisticians and planners, and planned future cooperation and exchange. Later that year,

two Chinese statisticians, Wu Hui 吴辉 from the Industrial Statistics Division and Gong

Jianyao 龚鉴尧 from the Agricultural Statistics Division, arrived at the ISI and spent over

an year in India studying statistical theory and its applications.

* * *

Ever since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on October 1 1949, the

Chinese had hewn close to the Soviet Union as a role model, regarding it as an older

brother with advanced experience [先进经验 xianjin jingyan], who needed to be learned

from and emulated. Made famous by Mao’s phrase of “leaning more to one side,” (一边

倒 yibian dao), the practical implications of this policy had been the disregard for those

kinds of relationships and gatherings that fell outside of this special mentoring program.

That the People’s Republic was in the Soviet camp fits a well understood Cold-War

paradigm. The world had two centers, with their own zones of influence, and they each

vied for control and influence over the vast regions they did not influence. In the

immediate years following the end of World War II, the rapid unraveling of empires and

the new emergence of nation states provided them with a playground for this exercise in

influence. This center-periphery framework has come to dominate recent studies of the

period, and does not always account for periphery-periphery links and what they can tell

272

us.659

As a result, studies of scientific exchange in the post-1945 years have frequently

focused on West-centered or Soviet-centered networks at the neglect of regional- or self-

avowedly “Third World” links such as the Sino-Indian exchanges of the 1950s.

As we have seen in Parts I and II, the story of statistics in the People’s Republic

also appears to follow the general pattern: if Western involvement and influence in the

spread of (social) sciences in China is one of the characteristics of the Republican period

(1911-1949), then Soviet presence is often cited as a key factor in the evolution of

(statistical) science in the immediate post-1949 years. But, as this chapter demonstrates,

this fits a neat Cold War framework that elides even as it explicates. Starting as early as

1951, and with increasing urgency after 1956, Chinese and Indian statisticians and

planners traded visits as they sought to learn from each other’s experiences. The later

exchanges, in particular, were qualitatively and quantitatively different from those in

1951, and help shed light not only on a particular instance of scientific cooperation and

knowledge production outside of the Cold War framework but also allow us to better

appreciate the history of statistics in the early People’s Republic. In so doing, they also

permit a more grounded understanding of the possible causes for the break-down in Sino-

659

There is a growing literature on the history of development and aid in the post-WWII era, much of it

through the prism of US or Soviet centered networks of aid and influence. See for instance: Nick Cullather

2010. The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia. Cambridge: Harvard

University Pres, 2010; David Ekbladh. The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction

of an American World Order, 1914 to the Present. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010; the

materials at the Cold War International History Project at the Wilson Center; Thomas P. Bernstein and

Hua-yu Li, eds. China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-Present. New York: Lexington Books, 2010;

Daniel Immerwahr. The Village Ideal: The United States, Community Development, and the World.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014; and Odd Arne Westad, ed. Brothers in arms: the rise

and fall of the Sino-Soviet alliance, 1945-1963. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.

For an insightful critique of the scholarship on the history of north-south scientific exchanges in the post-

World War II years, see: Alexis De Grief A and Mauricio Neito Olarte. “What We Still Do Not Know

About South-North Technoscientific Exchange—North-centrism, Scientific Difussion, and Social Studies

of Science.” In The Historiography of Contemprary Science, Technology, an Medicine—Writing Recent

Science, edited by Ronald E. Doel and Thomas Söderqvist, 239-259. London: Routledge, 2006.

273

Soviet relations, moving us beyond causes/arguments that can be located at the highest

levels of politics and in the egos of leaders.

At the heart of the Sino-Indian exchanges was the desire to learn more about

mathematical statistics and its applications, particularly the cutting-edge statistical

method of random sampling, which, while technically complex, held great practical

salience for large and diverse countries such as China and India. This chapter traces these

exchanges, explaining their timing and the motivation behind them. The story of these

exchanges provides a specific and highly illuminating case of the growing disaffection

that the Chinese experienced with a strategy of overt reliance on the Soviet Union for

technical and scientific advice. At the same time, these exchanges also highlight the

possibilities of south-south cooperation and exchange that became particularly appealing

after the April 1955 Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung. Each set of actors in these

exchanges had their own agendas. The Indians were particularly keen to learn more about

China’s planning methods. The Chinese, in turn, were much more focused on learning

about statistical theory and methods, and more broadly, about an approach to statistics,

which for political and ideological reasons had been rendered anathema.

P.C. Mahalanobis and the Promise of Post-War Statistics

As we have seen in Part I of this dissertation, the first half of the 20th

century was a time

of tremendous statistical innovation, benefiting in particular from genuine attempts at

melding theory with practice in order to solve the pressing concerns of the day. To review

briefly, until the end of the nineteenth century, the evolution of statistics had progressed

274

on two parallel tracks, one descriptive and the other analytic.660

The descriptive traced its

origins to the “political arithmetic” of the seventeenth century, and through it to a much

more fundamental and age-old phenomenon—the desire of the state to collect

information about its constituents, its land, its produce, and so on. The analytic can be

traced at least as far back as the 16th

and 17th

centuries and was principally concerned

with concepts of chance, probability, and estimating and controlling error, all in the

abstract , mathematical, sense. Starting in the 19th

century, these tracks began to intersect.

Statistical methods were brought to bear on the most pressing social concerns of the day.

This cross-pollination led to tremendous innovation, resulting in many of the concepts

that form the bedrock of modern day statistics—correlation, variance, regression, random

sampling, and so on.

By the 1940s, statistics, operations research, and other numerically driven

methods of understanding and organizing different aspects of day-to-day life were

increasingly gaining legitimacy. A somewhat well known example of this phenomenon is

found in the career of the Kennedy and Johnson era Secretary of Defense Robert

McNamara, who during WWII worked in the Air Force’s Office of Statistical Control,

applying statistical and management theory (the ‘Harvard Method’) to enhance the

efficiency of B-29 bombers.661

The end of the Second World War witnessed new

660

P.C. Mahalanobis. “Why Statistics?” Sankhya: The Indian Journal of Statistics 10, no. 3 (September

1950): 195-228. Quote from: 195-96.

661

As Phil Rosensweig noted in a 2010 essay, “perhaps more than anyone else, Robert McNamara

personified management in the 20th century. In his legacy we see the triumphs of modern management as

well as its most troubling limitations.” McNamara’s obsession with statistics is well documented. He put

his skills to good use during World War II and later in the 1950s by helping resuscitate the ailing Ford

Motor Company. During the Vietnam war this obsession with ‘statistical control’ led to the overt reliance

and favoring of numbers and models over information coming in from other, in retrospect, more reliable

sources, thereby contributing to the prolonging of the war. From 1968 to 1981 McNamara also served as

the President of the World Bank. See Phil Rosensweig 2010. “Robert S. McNamara and the Evolution of

Modern Management.” Harvard Business Review, December 1, 2010. On McNamara’s leadership during

275

attempts at global organization, and coincided with the post-colonial wave of newly

independent countries. Statistics came to be viewed as a key tool for national and

international development and stability. Newly formed nation states sought to establish

statistical bureaus, collect data, and address issues of governance and growth. At the

global level, newly formed international organizations like the United Nations and the

World Bank sought to render such data commensurable by establishing norms for its

collection, collation, and analysis.662

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis was in many ways among the most articulate

spokesmen for the promotion and use of statistics. “A physicist by training, a statistician

by instinct and a planner by conviction,”663

Mahalonobis melded scientific and

intellectual heft with a tremendous drive to engage in practical matters, and to use

statistics to understand and address the problems of every-day life. As a result, he became

intrinsically involved not just with independent India’s first forays into economic

planning and development, but perhaps even more significantly, with the development

and establishment of statistics, most notably sample survey techniques, as a principal tool

for knowing the world.664

Mahalanobis’ original training had been in physics, and it was

a subject he continued to teach into the 1950s. But a chance encounter with statistical

journals in a Cambridge University library led to his first exposure to statistics. By the

the Vietnam war years, also see David Halberstam. The Best and the Brightest. New York: Random House,

1972.

662

For a history of the UN and its role this process, see: Michael Ward. Quantifying the World: UN Ideas

and Statistics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.

663

C.R. Rao. “Prasantha Chandra Mahalanobis, 1893-1972.” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal

Society 19 (December 1973): 454-492, 455.

664

A useful overview of Mahlanobis’ polymath activities and achievements is the above cited C.R. Rao

biographical memoir. For a longer treatment also see: Ashok Rudra. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis: A

Biography. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.

276

mid-1920s he had abandoned plans to return to Cambridge to continue a PhD in physics,

choosing instead to stay in Calcutta and pursue various projects whereby he could apply

statistical methods to practical problems. In 1932, along with a few likeminded

individuals, he established the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Calcutta. Initially

operating out of a tiny room at Presidency College, by the 1950s the ISI had moved to a

sprawling campus in the north of the city and evolved into one of the premier centers for

statistical research and application across the globe.665

In his Presidential Address to the thirty-seventh session of the Indian Science

Congress in January 1950 Mahalanobis had astutely observed that, “at each upsurge of

social and political development, or during war, there is a rapid growth and expansion of

statistical practice.”666

Later in the same speech, he added:

Statistics is not only an applied science but is also a public science. It is

because of the close connexion with public activities that big

developments in statistics have always occurred only when there has been

need of unified policy and co-ordinated action in times of war or peace.667

665

In an interview, long time ISI professor C.R. Rao recalled getting an offer in 1946 “from Cambridge

University, UK, to do statistical analysis on some skeletal measurements, based on methods developed in

India.” He added he “was glad to accept the offer considering it as transfer of technology from an

underdeveloped country to an advanced country.” See: “ISI Honorary Member Interviews: Professor C.R.

Rao,” International Statistical Institute Newsletter, Volume 29, No. 2 (86) 2005. Accessed online on March

9, 2012 at: http://isi.cbs.nl/Nlet/NLet052.htm#09HonoraryMemberInterviews. Rao got his PhD in statistics

under Ronald A. Fisher at Cambridge before returning to the ISI and carving out a distinguished career.

666

Mahalanobis 1950: 196.

667

Mahalanobis 1950: 211. “In statistical research the greatest stimulus has always come from the need of

solving practical problems. R.A. Fisher’s work on the design of experiments was due to the urgent need of

solving the deadlock in agricultural field trials. W.A. Shewhart’s work on quality control arose from the

need of improving the efficiency of inspection in large scale production.” Mahalanobis went on to provide

three examples to prove his point: Post-New Deal United States where definite statutory responsibilities

were assigned to the Division of Statistical Standards; the exigencies of war time planning in the UK,

which led to the formation of the Central Statistical Organization; and the USSR, where the Central

Statistical Bureau was an integral part of the national planning organ, GOSPLAN.

277

And, to his mind, the 1940s and 1950s were precisely such a time. War time exigencies

had spurred the application of statistical theory to practical problems, and now in the

post-war world, statistics had a foundational role to play. In 1947 he brought his

considerable expertise, acumen, and drive to the UN’s newly formed Statistical

Commission and served as the chairman of its Sub-Commission on Statistical

Sampling.668

Mahalanobis was the driving force behind the Sub-Commission. “With the

vision of a pioneer he perceived how sampling methods could overcome the otherwise

insoluble problems of obtaining accurate information about a vast and still largely

illiterate country like India”669

Sampling, of course, has a long history. In his 1950 Presidential Address

Mahalanobis had explained that its twentieth century formulation was a combination of

the long history of purposive sampling with that of the recent developments in probability

and mathematics. Purposive sampling is a form of sampling in which the samples chosen

for analysis are selected because of some specific characteristic they possess. Today, we

would identify it more closely with qualitative research, not quantitative.670

For a long

time it was regarded as the only proper method of sampling and as late as 1926 it was

given considerable prominence by a committee of experts of the International Statistical

668

A part of the UNESCO, the Commission is the “apex entity of the global statistical system. It brings

together the Chief Statisticians from member states from around the world. It is the highest decision

making body for international statistical activities especially the setting of statistical standards, the

development of concepts and methods and their implementation at the national and international level.”

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/statcom/commission.htm accessed February 29 2012.

669

Jelke Bethlehem. “The Rise of Survey Sampling.” Discussion Paper (09015). The Hague: Statistics

Netherland, 2009.

670

To put it crudely, imagine, for instance, that we were to select Morningside Heights for intensive

statistical analysis, and then proceed to claim that the results reflected the larger reality of Manhattan.

278

Institute.671

But since then evidence had been consistently mounting that it produced

results that were neither representative nor accurate. The method of complete

enumeration was also brought under increased scrutiny. In a 1950 paper in the Bulletin of

the International Statistical Institute Mahalanobis had demonstrated “that with an

acceptable level of precision the costs of sample surveys are only about ten percent of

that of a complete enumeration.”672

In the same issue, Mahalanobis’ friend, collaborator,

and colleague on the sub-commission, the statistician Ronald A. Fisher, went even further

and stated that not only were sampling procedures ideal because of their adaptability,

speed, and economy, but that they were also more scientific than complete

enumeration.673

Mathematical theory undergirded sampling, and this permitted the

“careful design of sample surveys with a preset level of precision.”674

“Large-scale sample survey techniques as practiced today,” declared the

statistician C.R. Rao in his 1973 memoir of Mahalanobis for the Fellows of the Royal

Society, “owe much to the pioneering work of Mahalanobis in the forties and fifties.”675

According to Rao, Mahalanobis made three notable contributions to sample survey

671

Rao 1973: 472.

672

Bethlehem 2009: 16.

673

Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890-1962) was statistician, geneticist, evolutionary biologist, whose

contributions in statistics include the analysis of variance (ANOVA), the method of maximum likelihood,

the derivation of various sampling distributions, and experimental design. As a result of these contributions,

many regard him as one of the principal creators of modern statistics. For more, see: F. Yates and K.

Mather. “Ronald Aylmer Fisher 1890-1962.” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 9

(1963): 91–129.

674

Bethlehem 2009: 16.

675

The mathematical statistician Harold Hotelling observed: “No technique of random samples has, so far

as I can find, been developed in the United States or elsewhere, which can compare in accuracy with that

described by Professor Mahalanobis.” Fellow statistical luminary R.A. Fisher noted: “The I.S.I has taken

the lead in the original development of the technique of sample surveys, the most potent fact finding

process available to the administration.” See: Rao 1973: 472.

279

techniques: pilot surveys, the concept of optimum survey design, and interpenetrating

network of samples.676

He developed these methods during the 1930s and 1940s, starting

initially by using sampling procedures to estimate jute yield in Bengal in 1937. Over the

next two decades, along with his colleagues at the Indian Statistical Institute, he carried

out numerous sample surveys, developing new procedures and fine-tuning old ones.

Mahalanobis’ contributions were not limited to the development of theory and method

and he also assisted in establishing the framework and standards through which they

could be used across the world. As Chairman of the UN Sub-commission on Statistical

Sampling, he oversaw the publication of “The Preparation of Sample Survey Reports,”

which continues to provide the common guidelines for modern sampling procedures in

use by statistical bureaus across the world today.677

Mahalanobis’ interest in statistics was almost entirely instrumental, a point he

made most forcefully in his essay “Statistics must have a purpose.”678

This desire to use

statistics to solve real world problems also got him involved in economic planning by the

676

Rao 1973: 473. For a discussion of Mahalanobis’ critics and alternative viewpoints about best sampling

procedures during this time in India, see: A.P. Gore 1997. “P. V. Sukhatme: A 'Social' Statistician.”

Economic and Political Weekly 32, no. 6 (Feb. 8-14, 1997): 257-258.

677

United Nations Statistical Commission. “The Preparation of Sampling Survey Reports.” Statistical

Papers, Series C, No. 1. Lake Success, New York, 1950. Members of the first Sub-Commission included

statistical luminaries such as G. Darmois, W.E. Deming, F. Yates, and R.A. Fisher. A follow-up report was

published in 1964, with Mahalanobis serving as the Sub-commision’s Vice-Chairman. See: United Nations

Statistical Commission. “Recommendations for the Preparation of Sampling Survey Reports (Provisional

Issue).” Statistical Papers, Series C, No. 1, Rev. 2. New York, 1964. Members included F. Yates

(Chairman), T. Dalenius, N.Keyfitz, V. Monakhov, and P. Thionet. S. Zarkovic participated as a

representative of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, and D. B. Lahiri of the Indian Statistical Institute

was present as an observer. P. J. Loftus, Director of the Statistical Office, represented the Secretary-

General and M. D. Palekar served as secretary of the Group, p. v.

678

“Statistical data may be required to solve problems of a practical nature or for purely scientific or

theoretical investigations. Some of the data may be required for current use; some may have to be collected

for future utilization. The point to be stressed, however, is that statistics must have some purpose, practical

or theoretical, and for immediate or future use.” P.C. Mahalanobis “Statistics Must Have a Purpose.”

Samvadadhvam 1, no. 1 (July 1956): 3-10, 4.

280

late 1940s. His closeness to India’s Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, led to an

appointment on the Planning Commission, and before long he was charged with drawing

up India’s second Five Year Plan (1955-59). In preparation for this work Mahalanobis

spent the summer of 1954 traveling through the United States, the United Kingdom,

Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union, conferring with economists, statisticians, and

planners.679

A two-sector growth model that he had created in 1953, similar to G.A.

Feldman’s 1928 model, became the basis for India’s second Five Year Plan.680

Earlier in

the decade, he had succeeded in bringing the biennial Conference of the International

Statistical Institute to India. The Institute’s twenty-seventh session was held in Delhi in

December 1951.681

With the exception of Japan, which had played host in 1930, this

marked the first time that an Asian or African nation had hosted the prestigious

conference. By the 1950s Mahalanobis had also built the ISI up to be one of the leading

centers for statistical innovation in the world. It was a magnet for all kinds of scientists,

from either side of the iron curtain and beyond the curtain.682

And with the help of the

United Nations (UNESCO), in 1950 he had also set up at the ISI in Calcutta an

679

Mahalanobis was also seeking technical and material aid in statistical and planning matters, in particular

computers and related technology. See: Papers of Pitambar Pant (190 LII), Nehru Memorial Museum and

Library, New Delhi.

680

On alternatives to the Mahalanobis model and on contemporary debates surrounding planning strategies,

see: Meghnad Desai Desai, Meghnad. “Development Perspectives: Was there an Alternative to

Mahalanobis?” In India's Economic Reforms and Development: Essays for Manmohan Singh edited by

Isher Judge Ahluwalia, 43-52. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012.

681

Mahalanobis had tried to bring the Conference to India in 1949, but Switzerland’s invitation was

favored instead. India was assured that its invitation would be given serious consideration for 1951. For

more see File “EA/UN-I/9(58)-UNI, 1949,” at the National Archives of India (NAI), New Delhi.

682

The ISI Annual reports carry long lists of visiting scientists of varying disciplinary and ideological

persuasions. Mahalanobis himself was a great traveler and the ISI Annual Reports usually also devoted a

few pages to his global travels. By the end of the decade, some exasperated friends and colleagues began to

worry that the administration of the ISI was suffering as a result. In the early 1960s, this issue even drove

J.B.S. Haldane, then a full-time professor at the institute, to quit in protest. See: Ramachandra Guha. An

Anthropologist Among Marxists and Other Essays. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001, 134-135.

281

International Statistical Education Centre (ISEC), the principal purpose of which was to

train statistical workers and students from Asia and Africa. By 1956, students from

fourteen to fifteen countries were receiving training at the Center.683

Initial Overtures and Estrangement

The People’s Republic of China had largely stayed outside this newly globalizing world

of statistical exchange. That this was so was not for want of trying on the part of

Mahalanobis. He was acutely interested in what the Chinese were doing. In the summer

of 1954 he had confided to Pitambar Pant:

I had two talks with Blackett [P.M.S. Blackett, left-leaning English

physicist] and on one occasion he mentioned that he could foresee that in

10 years time India would be holding her own or even somewhat better

her conditions of life but he thought China during the same time would go

very far ahead; and he asked me whether this was not likely to have a

profound influence on India. This, of course, is always on the back of my

mind.684

And he was keen to visit China as well. Later that summer, while in the Soviet Union, he

wrote again: “I must also go to China – but after our ideas have become more clear

[sic].”685

Mahalanobis’ efforts at engaging with the People’s Republic had begun when

India hosted the twenty-seventh biennial session of the International Statistical Institute

in 1951. As the General Secretary of the National Committee charged with organizing the

683

“Professor Mahalanobis Welcomes Chou En-Lai.” Samvadadhvam 1, no. 3 (March 1957): 30-31.

684

Written on June 24th 1954. Papers of Pitambar Pant (190 LII), Nehru Memorial Museum and Library

(NMML), New Delhi, p. 14. In the same letter, Mahalanobis also mentioned a meeting with the economist

Joan Robinson, who too was deeply impressed by China’s progress, having visited there the previous year.

This letter is part of a long series of letters that PCM wrote to Pant during his global travels in the summer

of 1954.

685

Papers of Pitambar Pant (190 LII), p. 91, NMML, New Delhi.

282

conference, he oversaw the delivery of official letters of invitation to seventy-one

countries, including the People’s Republic of China. Individual invitations were also sent

to four Chinese members of the International Statistical Institute: Chen Da 陈达, J.P. Chu

[Zhu Junyi 朱君毅], K.P. King (Jin Guobao 金国宝), and T.L. Woo. These are familiar

names; prominent Republican era statisticians, they had attended the 1947 meeting in

Washington, D.C. and we have already encountered them in Part I of this dissertation.

The invitees were also informed that a special session of the International Statistical

Association for Asia and the Far East (ISAAFE) would be held shortly after the ISI

Conference with the aim of:

(a) Converting the ISAAFE into a wider Asian Statistical Institute with

both individual and governmental and institutional membership and

working partly at an individual and partly at a governmental level and (b)

considering statistical and economic problems of interest to Asian

Countries.686

Chinese participation was “earnestly” sought. It was hoped that a delegation from China

would be sent, failing which, perhaps someone from the Chinese Cultural Delegation,

then already visiting India, could be requested to attend.

There appears to have been no response from the Chinese government or from the

individual invitees. Mahalanobis was forced to resort to other means. Shortly afterwards,

at a party for ambassadors hosted by Nehru, he engineered a chance encounter with the

Chinese Ambassador and urged the Chinese to attend.687

Within a few days a new set of

invitations arrived at the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi. The ambassador deputed Shen

686

WJB 105-00229-01: 7-8. Additional material on the ISAAFE, including the Calcutta sessions, can also

be found in “File 393-International Association for Asia and the Far East,” PCMMMA, Kolkata.

687

Evidence of Mahalanobis’ doggedness exists only in a short undated report, which provides a quick

overview of Chinese participation in the 1951 ISI Conference. See: WJB 105-00229-01: 2-3.

283

Jian 申建, a counselor in the Embassy, to meet with Mahalanobis. By 21November, So-

wan Pitt, the First Secretary in the Embassy was able to inform Mahalanobis that the

Chinese government had accepted the invitation, and that “one or two members of the

Chinese Cultural Delegation, which is now visiting India, will be instructed to participate

in it.”688

A little over a week later, So-Wan Pitt confirmed the participation of Ti Chao-

pei (Di Chaobai 狄超白), a member of the Chinese delegation already in India.689

As it happened, Di was only able to attend the first day of the Conference. The

Chinese delegation was on its way to Burma and he was forced to leave Delhi the very

next day, on the 6th. To compensate, he drafted a short statement which he wished to

have either read out or distributed during the Conference. In keeping with our discussion

in Part I, this statement laid out the general view of statistics as it was taking shape in the

PRC at that time:

To us, statistics is one of the important means in the work of social

construction and scientific researches. At the same time, we are of the

opinion that the theories, methods and systems in connection with

statistics adopted in a country cannot but be closely linked with the social

system of the country in question; that only in a country where planned

economy is practicable that statistics could be accessible to the work and

daily life of the people and made for the people, its scope could be broad,

correct, timely, and its utilization the maximum.690

(Original in English)

With the jibe at the notion of a universal statistics successfully delivered, he lauded the

attempt at mutual understanding and exchange of statistical theories and methods that the

688

WJB 105-00229-01: 15.

689

Di Chaobai (1910-1978) was an economist who had taught at various universities prior to 1949. In July

of 1948 he was appointed the director of the department of statistics 统计处处长 of The Central Financial

and Economic Committee. In 1953 he was the head of the department of comprehensive statistics at the

SSB. See: DSJ: 1.

690

WJB 105-00229-01: 22.

284

Conference represented. Yet, he felt that “all these tasks could be satisfactorily fulfilled

only after the realization of a genuine international peace and the extinction of the

aggressive designs of imperialism.”691

Di made no mention of the Calcutta sessions but

an undeterred Mahalanobis responded the very same day, thanking Di for his

participation and contribution, and reiterated his desire that China, in spite of Di’s

unavailability, be represented at the Calcutta sessions:

“We are particularly eager that the People’s Republic of China should be

represented at the speical [sic] meetings which will be held in Calcutta on

18 and 19 December to consider the organization and programme of work

of a regional international statistical association or institute for Asian

countries…I hope this will be possible.”692

Within a few days Mahalanobis was informed that Mr. Tai Ping (戴平 Dai Ping), the

Consul at the Calcutta Consulate-General, would attend the Calcutta sessions.693

The Chinese appear to have come away unimpressed from the Calcutta sessions.

They had likely been wary of the whole Conference right from the time the invitations

first arrived. And their fears may have found justification as early as the inaugural session

of the Conference on 5 December itself, when India’s Finance Minister, Chintaman

Deshmukh, made the following observation toward the end of his (keynote) address:

The International Statistical Association for India and the Far East, (which

was established in 1949-50 through the efforts of the trainees from 10 or

12 countries who assembled in Delhi in [sic] training centre in population

and agricultural censuses under the auspices of the United Nations and the

Food and Agricultural Organization), is arranging to have a special session

on the 18th and 19th December in Calcutta to considers its future

691

WJB 105-00229-01: 23. For good measure he also added: “To fellow statisticians from Asian countries

who have shown us friendliness and co-operation, I wish to extend our respect and regards.”

692

WJB 105-00229-01: 24.

693

WJB 105-00229-01: 26.

285

organization and programme of work. The Government of India appreciate

the benefits which would be secured through the building up of an active

International Statistical Centre for the Asian countries, and would give

their support to any suitable programme of work. Such an organization

should prove a valuable adjunct to the Colombo Plan.694

UN auspices for the Association could not have been viewed favorably by the Chinese

who were themselves excluded from the UN in favor of the government of Chiang Kai-

shek (Jiang Jieshi 蒋介石) on Taiwan. But references to the Colombo Plan would also

have raised flags. Its full name was the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic and

Social Development in Asia and the Pacific and it had been conceived at the

Commonwealth Conference on Foreign Affairs held in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka)

in January 1950. It was formally launched in mid-1951 and by the end of the year the

United States had also become a member country.695

As a result, it would not have been

difficult for the Chinese to construe the ISI Conference and the Association, which was

renamed the International Statistical Association for Asia and the Far East during the

Calcutta sessions, as ideologically compromised.696

In a series of telegrams exchanged between the Calcutta Consulate General, the

Embassy in Delhi, and the Foreign Ministry in Beijing that date from December 1951

through March 1953, just such an understanding was arrived at. By the end of April 1952

all documents and reports pertaining to the Conference sessions in Delhi and Calcutta had

694

WJB 105-00229-01: 36. This, Di no doubt would have heard, given that he was present only on this one

day of the Conference.

695

For more visit: http://www.colombo-plan.org/ .

696

It is worth noting that the Korean War was raging during these months and that the US had a prominent

role to play in the ISI. The 1947 session of the ISI, its twenth-fifth, had actually been held in Washington,

D.C.

286

been delivered to the Foreign Ministry in Beijing.697

It took another six months before an

initial opinion was forthcoming. In the considered judgment of the Ministry, it was felt

that the Chinese should “in principle not plan to maintain links with the [said]

organization.”698

Early the following year, further explication was put down in writing:

The [stated] Association has extremely close ties with the international

statistics society, operates under the influence and control of imperialism,

and there is a great probability that in the name of learning and science it

will be used to conduct intelligence [related] activities.699

Two months later, in March 1953, clear instructions were issued that it was no longer

necessary to treat with this Association or respond to its overtures.700

The People’s

Republic was much better off without involving itself in imperialist misadventures,

especially when it had radically different views on the definition and purpose of statistics.

As discussed in Part I, a close and profitable relationship had already been established

with the Soviet Union, and little was to be gained by dealing with what appeared to be

suspect organizations like the ISAAFE or the two ISIs.701

697

The materials were sent out on 9 March 1952 by Mahalanobis, who was the President of the Association.

See “File 393-International Association for Asia and the Far East,” PCMMMA, Kolkata.

698

“原子上不擬與該組織聯繫.” See: WJB 105-00229-01: 44.

699

WJB 105-00229-01: 45.

700

WJB 105-00229-01: 47.

701

In 1953 Mahalanobis had also tried to invite the Beijing University mathematical statistician P.L. Hsu

(Xu Baolu 许宝騄; mentioned briefly at the end of Chapter IV) to spend several months at the ISI. The

archival trail runs cold, but from what I can determine, P.L. Hsu never visited the ISI. For more, see: “File

titled P.L. Hsu,” PCMMMA, Kolkata.

287

Statistics as a Case Study in Disaffection

By 1956, however, confidence in the Soviet Union and its advanced experience was no

longer taken for granted. Even though recent scholarship has highlighted the tensions in

the Sino-Soviet story, including specific cases where initial idolization of Soviet models

was confronted by the reality of their execution or their sheer inapplicability to Chinese

conditions, the causes of the disenchantment that began in 1956 are still largely attributed

to two more over-arching reasons.702

As Hua-Yi Lee and Thomas P. Bernstein have

observed in a recent edited volume, the general consensus in the scholarship is that the

evolution of Sino-Soviet relations strongly influenced Chinese attitudes toward the Soviet

model.703

Accordingly, the causes for the disaffection are still largely framed either as an

ideological dissonance, or an egotistical one, or both. They frequently center on how Mao

and the CCP leadership reacted to Khrushchev’s 1956 speech denouncing Stalin’s

personality cult, on Mao believing that in the post-Stalin era he ought to be regarded as

the leader of the Socialist world, and also on the reception of events like the quashing of

Hungarian revolt that year.704

In his January 1956 report, “On the question of

intellectuals,” Zhou Enlai recognized other reasons as well. The report acknowledged the

continuing central role that Soviet aid needed to play in order for China to advance in

science and technology, but buried in the middle were also clear words of caution:

On the question of the study of the Soviet Union, however, in the past

there had also been such defects as undue haste, arbitrary learning, and

mechanical application. Some comrades even arbitrarily rejected the

702

Li Bernstein 2010.

703

Bernstein and Li 2010: 3. Also see: Shen 2003: 410.

704

Bernstein and Li 2010: 14-15. The latest and most comprehensive treatment of the Sino-Soviet split is

Lüthi 2008. Also see: Westad 1998.

288

achievements of the capitalist countries in science and technique. These

defects should henceforth be avoided.705

Zhou’s warning is redolent of the possibility that the disaffection was widespread and

substantive. The articles in the Bernstein and Li volume have already suggested some

bottom up causes for disaffection and frustration—most notably the claim that the advice

being given by the Soviets did not take into account local Chinese conditions. But it is the

case of statistics, perhaps, that provides one of the clearest instances of a widespread and

substantive disaffection with Soviet advice and expertise.

To review briefly from Part I, the Chinese adoption of the Soviet approach to

statistics occurred in the early 1950s. In the first couple of years after 1949, statistical

treatises written by Chinese statisticians freely reflected, both, Soviet as well as what

were subsequently identified as bourgeois English-American approaches to statistics.

Starting in 1950, and gathering momentum from the following year, Anglo-American

statistics was progressively critiqued and repudiated in favor of the Soviet understanding

of statistics. By the time the SSB was established in 1952, the Soviet approach held sway,

both in the academy as well as in the practical fields of statistical work. This Soviet

approach attained even greater influence in the People’s Republic following the 1954

conference on statistics in the Soviet Union. At this conference, statistics was reaffirmed

as a social science, in service to building a socialist society, bifurcating it—rhetorically

and substantively—from the tainted, bourgeois, and socially unproductive pursuit of

abstract mathematical statistics.

705

Zhou Enlai 周恩来. “On the Question of Intellectuals.” In Communist China 1955-1959—Policy

Documents and Analysis, edited by Robert R. Bowie and John K. Fairbank, 128-144, 137. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1963. To be fair, this appears to be the only cautionary instance in the long report,

which otherwise goes to great lengths to stress how valuable and appreciated Soviet technical assistance is.

289

In the People’s Republic, the practical implications of this definition were two-

fold. Within the academy, the study of statistics stood divided. The discipline of statistics,

now defined as a social science, was taught in statistics departments where the focus was

primarily on procedure, methodology, and work. Mathematical statistics, that

“unproductive” and bourgeois pursuit, was banished to mathematics department. As a

result, much like in the Soviet Union, the theoretical and practical arms of statistics were

separated, denying the possibility of mutual cross-pollination or the discovery of new

theories and methods through application, experimentation, and testing.706

Outside the

academy, in the world of statistical work, the impact was just as significant, and resulted

in essentially two methods for gathering statistical information: (1) the establishment of a

periodical report system based on complete enumeration wherein from the village level

upwards, paper reports were compiled and supplied to each successive higher level till

they all reached the headquarters of the State Statistics Bureau in Beijing; and (2) where

complete enumeration was deemed impractical, sample surveys employing the typical

sampling methods.707

Accordingly, by 1957, the SSB was able to summarize:

“For the purpose of providing statistical data for drafting and examining

national plan [sic], the complete enumeration periodical report system has

been established in all the economic departments in the country. To

supplement these, a sampling body of sixteen thousand farm households

and another of six thousand industrial workers families have been selected

for survey purpose.”708

706

In his speech on intellectuals, Zhou would criticize this too: “It is certainly unquestionable that theory

must not be divorced from practice and we must fight against any theoretical study which is dissociated

from practice. But the main tendency at present is the neglect of theoretical study.” Zhou Enlai 1963: 141.

707

The Chinese is dianxing diaocha 典型调查 or zhongdian diaocha 重点调查.

708

See: WJB 105-00530-05: 11-12. “Complete enumeration periodical report system” is how the Chinese

themselves translated “quanmian tongji baobiao zhidu 全面]统计报表制度.”

290

The sampling spoken of here was purposive (also called typical) sampling. As already

noted, this is a method of sampling in which the samples are not selected using any

random or stochastic method. It was the precursor to random sampling and had had a

long history of being regarded as a valid and worthwhile method. Even into the early 20th

century it was officially accepted in many places and, as such, its employment into the

1950s was not altogether unusual.709

Within a few years, the constraints imposed by the methods of socialist statistics

became unmistakable. For a country with limited technical resources and a limited supply

of trained personnel, yet saddled with an enormous agricultural sector and the largest

population in the world, the challenges posed by complete enumeration were legion. And

they were made harder still by the employment of the periodical report system. Paper

reports, full of tables and summaries, were generated at each level of administration.

Very soon, not only Beijing, but every administrative level was complaining of a flood of

papers and numbers, and little capacity to make any sense of them. Excess issuing (滥发

lanfa) of reports was a problem that drew the attention of all levels of the statistical

system. Even though repeated attempts had been made to tackle the problem, it remained

a constant feature of statistical work into the second half of the decade.

The reliance on purpose sampling also generated problems. Where complete

enumeration was not deemed possible, such as in accounting for total area under crops or

calculating agricultural yield, the method of purposive sampling had been and was being

employed. As Mahalanobis would himself later explain:

An attempt is made to select sample-units (agricultural fields, households,

etc) which are typical or have characteristics close to the average…It is

709

Jelke Bethlehem 2009: 8.

291

now recognized that the method of “purposive sampling” is not

scientifically correct. The only sound method is “random or probability

sampling” which can be relied upon to supply truly representative results;

and which alone makes it possible to calculate valid estimates of the

sampling error.710

Chinese statisticians were, thus, frequently stuck with estimates that did not accurately

represent any reality on the ground. Claiming that a particular village or tract of land was

representative of an entire prefecture, and using numbers gained from a close analysis of

its characteristics, only lead to inaccurate estimates. These estimates, upon collation with

other inaccurate estimates, helped compound errors, and could eventually result in data

that bore little relation to any reality on the ground.

By 1956, socialist statistics had exhibited weakness on at least three counts. First,

by not taking into account the greater challenges posed by China’s larger population and

predominantly agrarian economy, it demonstrated a rigidity that rendered it incapable of

adapting to local conditions. Second, the insistence on using purposive sampling meant

that the technology and scientific theories being employed were not the most advanced,

or to use Mahalanobis’ even more blunt term, simply not correct. Finally, and most

damningly, the methods had not been able to deliver the desired results, something best

articulated by Wang Sihua himself, who noted that statistical work remained unable to

address the needs of the Planning Commission and the demands of the nation’s leaders.

It is precisely at this moment that the statistical exchanges with India were re-

established. That the Chinese were willing to explore solutions in, and in cooperation

with, India was perhaps no longer as inconceivable as it was in 1951. Frustration with

Soviet expertise and methods had already led Zhou Enlai to demand that the People’s

Republic not neglect advances made in capitalist countries. India was a useful middle-

710

P.C. Mahalanobis. Some Impressions of a Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957: 5. PCMMA, Kolkata.

292

ground, where the intellectual and policy environment was open to a variety of

perspectives. And Sino-Indian relations, especially in the cultural sphere, had blossomed

since the early 1950s.

Sino-Indian contacts: Wrestling for Asia’s Soul711

In 1953, Frank Moraes, then editor of the Times of India and recently returned from a

tour of the People’s Republic of China, wrote:

“By a quirk of fate Asia’s two most densely populated countries, which

are also neighbors, are the testing grounds for two differing and

contending political philosophies. If China proves that her system of

government ensures economic security to the vast mass of her people

without detracting greatly from their sense of freedom, Asia will be lost to

Communism. If India, on the other hand, demonstrates that democratic

government can ensure not only economic security but individual liberty,

then Asia will be won to democracy. What India and China are today

doing is wrestling for the political soul of Asia. That is why India’s role in

Asian affairs is crucial and vital.”712

The fate of the ‘political soul of Asia,’ as Moraes called it, captured the imagination of

many minds in the 1950s.713

Not least among them were Indians and Chinese themselves.

There was mutual suspicion, but also much admiration, at least from several individual

Indian visitors. Unfortunately, the documentary record of this mutual appraisal, and of

711

By contact here, I mean to specifically exclude diplomatic engagements and exchanges, which would

undoubtedly have been legion. In addition to individual archival and published sources as identified, I have

relied in large part on the following two surveys to reconstruct Sino-Indian exchanges of the 1950s: (1)

Margaret W. Fisher and Joan V. Bondurant. “Review Article: The Impact of Communist China on Visitors

from India.” The Far Eastern Quarterly 15, no. 2 (February 1956): 249-265; and (2) Herbert Passin. “Sino-

Indian Cultural Relations.” The China Quarterly, no. 7 (July-September 1961), pp. 85-100. For more on

Sino-Indian contact during the first half of the twentieth century and during the nineteenth century, see:

Madhavi Thampi ed. India and China in the Colonial World. New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2005.

712

Frank Moraes. Report on Mao’s China. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1953, 207.

713

This was very clearly how the two new superpowers and ideological metropoles perceived things. The

discourse of ‘losing China’ was particularly lively in the United States, with the concomitant realization

that India and other countries could not also be lost.

293

the varied contacts that formed at least part of its basis, is rather lop-sided. The plentiful

and varied writings of numerous Indian visitors, ranging from die-hard Communists

through Communist sympathizers to those openly skeptical or even disdainful of

Marxism, make it hard to pinpoint an “Indian” view of China.714

They do, however,

suggest an always enthusiastic and at times also serious engagement. Chinese accounts,

especially the impressions of individual visitors are harder to come by, making it difficult

to gauge the nature and variety of views that individual Chinese may have entertained

about India.715

A survey of existing materials suggests that Sino-Indian contacts during the

decade of the 1950s had three distinct phases. India was the sixteenth nation to recognize

the PRC on the international stage in early 1950.716

Diplomatic relations were established

with India’s ambassador to the Republic of China, K.M. Panikkar, carrying on in the

recently renamed and re-designated capital of Beijing after 1949.717

Even so, the first

phase, which lasted through much of 1951 was marked by limited contact, fueled in part

by the first disagreements over border demarcations, the status of Tibet, and by Beijing’s

714

Passin claims that as many as 2000 Indians may have visited China over the course of the decade. See:

Passin 1961: 91.

715

It can be argued that there was a greater coherence from the Chinese side than the Indian. This is in part

supported by the variety of delegations from India that visited China, with people with varying agendas,

some openly hostile to China. Less is known of visiting Chinese delegations, partly because they were not

as prolific in reporting on their travels as their Indian counterparts, but also because they all appear to have

been official in nature.

716

“On 1 April, 1950, India became the first non-socialist bloc country to establish diplomatic relations

with the People’s Republic of China.” See: “India-China Relations,” Government of India, Ministry of

External Affairs. Accessed May 27, 2014 at:

http://www.mea.gov.in/Portal/ForeignRelation/China_January_2014.pdf. Also see: Dieter Heinzig The

Soviet Union and Communist China, 1945-1950: The Arduous Road to the Alliance. M.E. Sharpe, 2004,

292.

717

On Panikkar’s experiences as an ambassador during the early PRC, see: K.M. Panikkar. In Two Chinas:

Memoirs of a Diplomat. London, G. Allen & Unwin, 1955.

294

suspicions regarding India’s independence.718

The second phase, from 1951 to 1954,

witnessed the beginning of mutual visits that were primarily political and cultural in

nature and often included state and non-state participants in equal measure—whether as

high diplomacy, as people to people contacts, or as part of cultural delegations. Starting

in 1955, and carrying on through early 1959, these exchanges expanded to also include

high powered state delegations on fact-finding missions and study tours. 1956, in

particular, appears to have been the a high-tide of Sino-Indian exchanges.

The first important milestone in the Sino-Indian exchanges was an unofficial

Indian goodwill mission to China in September 1951. The Indians were invited by five

Chinese organizations to celebrate the second anniversary of the founding of the PRC.719

In return a Chinese cultural delegation consisting of fifteen scholars, artists, and scientists

and led by Ding Silin (丁西林 Ding Xilin), Vice-Minister for Cultural Affairs visited

India later in the year. According to Herbert Passin, “this was the first Chinese delegation

to visit a non-Communist country.”720

The following year a cultural delegation, led by

Vijaylakshmi Pandit, was sent by India to participate in China’s May-day celebrations.721

India-China/China-India Friendship Associations (ICFA;中印友好协会 zhong-yin

718

India’s independence was considered incomplete since it had merely replaced a foreign bourgeoisie ruling elite with a local one. In the Chinese world-view, there were communist states and those states that

would surely, eventually become communist. And these states, more specifically the people of these states,

needed all the help the Chinese could offer. Or so, at least, was how several Indian and Western

commentators perceived this. See Passin 1961: 87-88, for more along these lines.

719

Bondurant and Fisher 1956 cover this visit, and the various reports and memoirs published by the

delegation, in some detail in their review essay. The five “All China” organizations were: The Peace

Council, The Federation of Labor, the Democratic Women's Federation, The Democratic Federation of

Youth, and the Federation of Literature and Arts Circles.

720

Passin 1961: 85.

721

Bondurant and Fisher 1956; also see: NAI 10(8)-XP, 1952.

295

youhao xiehui) had been set up in each country by 1952, and these quickly became one of

the principal organizers of mutual visits.722

In June 1954, Zhou Enlai visited India and in

October of the same year Nehru visited China. These two visits not only re-affirmed the

principles of Panchsheela, the Buddhist inspired principles of mutual respect and

friendship, but also resulted in the signing of agreements on trade and student

exchanges.723

The Afro-Asian Conference at Bandung in the spring of 1955 further served to

enhance cultural exchanges.724

In September, thirty-two Indian teachers and students

representing ten Universities went on a four-week trip to China. They were led by C.P.

Ramaswamy Aiyer, the Vice-Chancellor of Benares Hindu University. That same month

Chinese Muslims en route to Mecca were greeted by Indian Muslims and Hindus in

Delhi.725

September also witnessed the visit to China of India’s Health Minister, Srimati

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur.726

In October, an Indian film festival was held in China, which

reportedly had three million viewers spread across twenty cities. During the festival, an

eleven-member Indian film delegation visited China and was even granted an audience

722

See, for instance: WJB 105-00101-02; 105-00101-03; 105-00101-04; and 105-00884-01. Also see NAI

1(41)-FEA, 1955, where K.M. Panikkar requests a grant of INR 5,000 to regularize the activities of the

Indian ICFA, which he claims had descended into a moribund state by 1955, lacking both a staff and a

proper office.

723

Passin 1961: 95. In that year, Passin notes, two Chinese were sent to India to study Hindi and one Indian

was sent to China to study Chinese.

724

On Bandung and its significance, see: Christopher J. Lee, ed. Making a World after Empire:

The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010.

725

Passin 1961.

726

See: NAI 10(23)-FEA, 1955.

296

with the Chairman.727

Other exchanges included a trip by Dr. Raghu Vira through China

and Inner Asia to collect material for the Indian Academy of Asian Culture, the visit of

10 Chinese students, mostly to study Hindi, and a Chinese exhibit at the India Industries

Fair in New Delhi.728

The post-Bandung bonhomie and euphoria, already evident during the second half

of 1955, blossomed in 1956. In that year “alone, 26 Indian delegations to China were

counted and 33 Chinese delegations to India.”729

But 1956 also marked a qualitative shift

in the exchanges. As the Indian leader of an ICFA delegation to China noted,

“We are proud to record here another important fact that premier Chou-en-

lai was pleased to grant us an interview which lasted for over an hour. We

discussed very frankly and unreservedly several problems common both to

India and China and the general feeling on both sides was that it would be

in the interests of both the countries if an exchange on a more lasting basis

between scholars and Scientists or technicians of both countries is made

possible. This of course, it was recognized, requires [sic] to be done at

Government level.”730

This appears not to have been just lip service. As many as three Indian Planning

Commission delegations visited China in the summer of that year with the explicit aim of

studying Chinese planning techniques and experiences. The first was actually to have

been led by Mahalanobis himself, but owing to his unavailability on account of ill health,

was led by his protégé Pitambar Pant, who served as the secretary to the Planning

Commission. The goal of this delegation, which arrived in China in July, was to study the

727

Passin 1961; the delegation was led by led by the thespian Prithviraj Kapoor, the father of the famous

Indian actor and director Raj Kapoor, and by B.N. Sircar.

728

Passin 1961.

729

Passin 1961: 91. Passin himself cites another source: Kirkpatrick, op. cit., p. 359. This appears to be a

phantom source, since Passin doesn’t mention Kirkpatrick before this.

730

NAI EA FEA_4(4)-FEA/56: “Report of the Leader, Cultural Delegation sent by the India-China

Friendship Association to China in April-May 1956 under the leadership of Prof. P.V. Bapat,” p. 41.

297

Chinese economy and planning methods.731

That same month, two other delegations

arrived in Beijing. The first was a seven member team that included experts on

cooperative organizations and had come to study agrarian cooperatives. They visited

nineteen producers’ cooperatives in eight provinces, spending altogether about two

months in China.732

The second was a six-member agricultural team under Deputy

Minister M.V. Krishnappa whose goal was to study Chinese Agricultural Planning and

techniques.733

The Chinese, in turn, sent a three member team to India in August to study

“various technique of using Hankoo [sic] in House Construction.”734

1956 was also the

year when real substantive statistical exchanges were inaugurated, first by Zhou’s visit to

the ISI on 9 December, which was then followed by the visit of the delegation led by

Wang Sihua that stayed at the ISI for about a month. Other exchanges included a Chinese

Women's Delegation, also in December; ten journalists from India and as well as various

student groups.735

Zhou Enlai summed up this new, more substantive enthusiasm for

engagement in a letter he sent Jawaharlal Nehru on the same day that he visited the ISI:

“Through the present visit, we have been able to know more [of] India and have realized

that in many respects the Chinese people can learn from your people. The Chinese

731

See NAI EA_FEA_4(18)-FEA/56; more on this delegation and its possible importance below.

732

Government of India, Planning Commission. Report of the Indian Delegation to China on Agrarian

Cooperatives. New Delhi: Government of India: May 1957.

733

Government of India, Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Report of the Indian Delegation to China on

Agricultural Planning and Techniques. New Delhi: Government of India, 1956.

734

See: NAI 7(10)-FEA, 1955 (Secret).

735 NAI 4(48)-FEA, 1956; NAI EA_FEA_4(18)-FEA/56; and Passin 1961.

298

Government will consult the Indian Government through diplomatic channels about

sending people over to study.”736

By the end of 1956, domestic concerns with an inefficient and ineffective

statistical apparatus, combined with a greater engagement with India across all spheres,

had made engaged statistical exchanges a possibility again.

Re-engagement

The foundation for the statistical exchanges that followed was laid during the visit of the

first Planning Commission Delegation. By the time it arrived in Beijing on 12 July 1956,

the Chinese may already have had some sense of the advanced statistical methods being

employed in India. During his 1955 China tour, Nehru had informed Zhou Enlai of the

work that Mahalanobis had been doing in the field of statistics and planning.737

Yet, it is

unclear whether Zhou or the statisticians at the SSB had much detailed information.

When Bahadur Singh, Counselor in the Indian embassy in Beijing, approached the

Chinese in early April to inform them that Mahalanobis was interested in leading an

Indian Planning Commission delegation to China, the initial response from Xue Muqiao,

the director of the SSB and a Vice-Chairman of China’s Planning Commission, was

lukewarm. He scribbled the less than enthusiastic note, “seemingly will not be good to

refuse,” and forwarded the file to his boss, Li Fuchun for his approval. Li, in turn, agreed

736

WJB 203-00084-01: 129.

737

A People’s Daily article published on January 26 1956 (India’s Republic Day) had praised India’s

achievements in economic construction and mentioned Mahalanobis’ role in drawing-up second five-year

plan. See: Feng Zhidan 冯之丹. “Yindu renmin de jingji jianshe chengjiu 印度人民的经济建设成就 (The

Achievements in Economic Construction of the Indian People).” RMRB January 26 1956, 4.

299

with Xue and forwarded it to Zhou Enlai for his final approval. This Zhou gave on April

19th

, instructing the relevant bureaus and ministries to make necessary preparations.738

A reception team to organize the delegation’s activities was set up, with Xue

Muqiao as its leader.739

Among the first things they did was to request more information

about the delegation members. The Chinese embassy responded to their request by the

third week of May. In addition to informing the Foreign Ministry of Mahalanobis’

credentials, they also pointed out that he was pretty open-minded 开明—having visited

and drawn from the influences of both the socialist and capitalist worlds—and favorably

disposed toward socialism.740

The other members—the statisticians M. Mukherjee and R.

Natarajan, and Pitambar Pant—were similarly evaluated. It was acknowledged that the

delegation was comprised of highly qualified specialists. The Chinese should adopt a

warm and friendly attitude toward them and introduce not just the People’s Republic’s

recent achievements but also her short-comings and failings.741

It was also felt that, given

Mahalanobis’ fame and achievements, he ought to be invited to deliver a few lectures on

important statistical questions.742

The delegation’s familiarity with statistics and planning

approaches in the United States as well as the Soviet Union was especially attractive to

the Chinese.743

Such expertise made the delegation ideal sources for learning about the

738

The phrase Xue used was: “似乎不好拒绝.” See WJB 105-00487-02: 5-8

739

Other members included: Zhang X, Yang Ying X, Wang Guangwei; see: WJB 105-00487-02: 5-8.

740

They said Mahalanobis was open to accepting socialist ideas.

741

The Indians had provided them with a list of 18 questions/subjects of interest, responses to which had

begun to be drafted. This list was later supplemented by an additional 10 questions on July 27. The Indians

were also interested in particular in ascertaining the nature and extent of Soviet aid provided to the People’s

Republic. WJB 105-00487-0: 13-14, 21, and 32-34.

742

WJB 105-00487-02: 16.

743

WJB 105-00487-02: 10-12.

300

methods of capitalist countries. Accordingly, it was hoped that the delegation members

would introduce not just statistics and statistical work in India, but also in the West.

Lectures at universities on these subjects were also envisaged. Finally, advice was sought

on what important statistical materials (such as journals and books) from the United

Nations, South-east Asia, and the West were worthy of subscription.

As it transpired, Mahalanobis fell ill and had to withdraw his participation. The

delegation was instead led by Pant and spent a total of forty days in the People’s

Republic.744

During that time they held over thirty-six special discussion meetings with

officials, planners, and statisticians across several bureaus. They were based out of

Beijing, but they also traveled a fair bit across China, visiting the famous Anshan steel

works and the cities of Tianjin, Changchun, Shenyang, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Such

travel “gave an opportunity to the team to see the work of planning and statistical

organizations at the provincial and municipal level.”745

It is not clear to what extent the

Chinese demands to learn more about statistics outside the socialist bloc were met. The

ISI Annual Report from that year states that:

At the request of the State Planning Commission, the members of the team

delivered a few lectures at the Planning Commission premises. Pitambar

Pant spoke on Planning in India. R. Natarjan talked about Industries in

India and M. Mukherjee spoke on the Statistical set up of India. M.

Mukherjee gave another talk to a small group of technical workers on the

method of estimation of national income in India and the logical basis of

income estimation work in the West and in the East.746

744

They entered the PRC through Shenzhen on 8 July 1956, and departed on 17 August.

745

Indian Statistical Institute. Annual Report, April 1956 - March 1957. Kolkata, 1957, p. 84.

746

Indian Statistical Institute. Annual Report, April 1956 - March 1957. Kolkata, 1957, p. 84.

301

This is the only indication I have found that the Indians actually delivered talks to the

Chinese, though there must have been opportunities during the small discussion group

meetings for informal exchanges on these subjects.

If they had not done so before, the benefits of mutual exchange and learning seem

to have become evident by the end of the trip. Just before departing the People’s Republic,

the delegation traveled up to the Communist Party summer resort town of Beidaihe 北戴

河 and spent two hours in conversation with Zhou Enlai. During the conversation Zhou

stated that he was particularly impressed with Indian statistical methods in the field of

agriculture. He lamented that the Chinese themselves had been using purposive sampling,

which had led to non-scientific results. In this matter, India was more advanced 先进 than

China, and China ought to study India.747

He went on to add that the history of planning

in both countries was very short. Their experience was extremely limited, and they had

committed errors along the way. But he “hoped that henceforth [the two nations] could

mutually learn form each other.”748

Pant’s suggestion that an Indian team visit the

following year was warmly received. So was his suggestion that one to three Chinese

planners be sent to the Indian Planning Commission for a period of six to twelve months,

though the internal memos went on to note that Pant did not make clear what exactly he

expected the Chinese planners to do.749

Finally, Pant also invited a one to three member

team to Calcutta in December of that year to participate in the silver jubilee celebration of

the ISI. Zhou not only confirmed Chinese participation but added that a study team would

747

WJB 105-00487-02: 5.

748

WJB 105-00487-02: 9.

749

WJB 105-00487-02: 30.

302

also be sent to the ISI. And then, for good measure, he added: “I myself hope that I [too]

will be able to meet with Prof. Mahalanobis when I am in Calcutta in mid-December.”750

The stage had been set.

Silver Jubilee Assessments

As we have seen, Zhou Enlai did indeed personally visit the ISI and meet with

Mahalanobis on 9 December 1956.751

Two days after Zhou’s visit, a four member

delegation arrived at the Indian Statistical Institute on 11 December 1956. The team was

led by Wang Sihua, who was now one of the SSB’s deputy directors. Other members of

the team were Hwang Chien To, the director of the SSB’s Agricultural Statistics

Department; Tai Shih Kuang (戴世光 Dai Shiguang), a professor at People’s University

in Beijing; and Sun Shih Cheng, a research officer of the SSB.752

Their first task was to

attend the ISI’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations. Wang later reported that the

People’s Republic and the Soviet Union were the only two countries to have sent official

delegations. Representatives of twelve other countries—all “capitalist” ones—were

present in a personal capacity, and included such notables as Ronald A. Fisher of the

United Kingdom and the Americans Jerzy Neyman and Morris H. Hansen.753

The

750

WJB 105-00487-02: 3.

751

Zhou was accompanied by His Excellency Mr. Ho Lung, Vice Premier of the State Council and

Marshall of the People’s Republic of China, His Excellency Pan Tsu-Li, Ambassador For the People’s

Republic of China in India, Mr. Chiso Kwan-hua, Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Chief Minister

of West Bengal, His Excellency the Ambassador of India in China.

752

Samvadadhvam 1, no. 3 (March 1957): 20.

753

Wang Sihua. “Kaocha yindu tongji gongzuo de baogao 考察印度统计工作的报告 (Report on Indian

Statistical Work).” Report delivered at the 6th

Annual Statistical Work Conference in Beijing in September

1957, published in Tongji gongzuo zhongyao wenjian huibian di sanji 统计工作重要文件汇编第三辑

(Compilation of Important Documents Relating to Statistical Work—Volume III). Beijing: Statistical Press,

303

festivities included boat rides on the Hooghly River, paper presentations [check], and

much feting of the Institute’s success. Wang “conveyed to Indian statisticians the

fraternal greetings of the statisticians in his own country.” He lauded the achievements of

the institute, both in theory and in its practical applications, reserving special praise for

the advances in sample survey and agricultural statistics.

“In these fields, the Indian Statistical Institute has accumulated not only

data for planning and policy making, but also a great amount of valuable

experience and methods, which will not only be useful to India but also to

other countries including China.”

Wang highlighted the similarities that existed between the two countries and said that

Chinese statisticians hoped to follow Chairman Mao’s instructions that one must learn

from other countries by learning from Indian statisticians.754

With the niceties taken care

off, the delegation then proceeded to spend over a month studying statistics and statistical

methods.

Altogether, the delegation was in India from the 11 December 1956 to 16 January

1957. Within a month of their return to Beijing, Wang Sihua published a report in the

principal statistical journal, Statistical Work 《统计工作》, summarizing the delegations

findings, and putting forward its recommendations.755

Wang informed his readers that

November 1959, 90-97 (quote from 90). The other countries included: The Netherlands, United States,

Lebanon, Thailand, Pakistan, Japan, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. For details, see:

Samvadadhvam 1, no. 3 (March 1957).

754

Samvadadhvam 1, no. 3 (March 1957): 16.

755

Wang Sihua 王思华. “Jieshao yindu tongji gongzuo, jiji kaizhan quanguo chouyang diaocha 介绍印度

统计工作，积极开展全国抽样调查 (Introducing India’s Statisitcal Work, Actively Carrying out a

National Sample Survey).” Tongji gongzuo 1957.06: 8-10, 17. The article was reproduced in Wang Sihua

1986: 95-102. Dai Shiguang 戴世光, Wang’s fellow delegation member, also wrote an article on India’s

sample survey system but it was entirely factual in nature and did not seek to make recommendations for

the People’s Republic. See: Dai Shiguang 戴世光. “Yindu de quanguo chouyang diaocha—shehui jingji

304

from the very beginning Prime Minister Nehru strongly promoted the setting up of a

statistical organization for post independence India. Accordingly, in 1949 a National

Income Committee was set up, which subsequently discovered that data for its work was

lacking or fragmentary. In response, to collect data on income the National Sample

Survey was established in 1950. The delegation spent most of their time in West Bengal

and as a result was able to witness the ISI’s close relationship with state statistical organs.

Wang concluded that even though it remained an autonomous body, the ISI had in effect

become the Indian Government’s principal organ for statistical research and progress. Its

principal activities included planning and design of country-wide sample surveys, the

consolidation and research of statistical data, and the training of personnel. After 25 years

of development, it had 1,400 or so employees, of whom 850 worked on sample

surveys.756

Overall Wang offered several key observations about statistical work in India.

The first, and perhaps most striking to the delegation, was the fact that statistical work

was not centrally organized or carried out. In line with the federal structure of the country,

each state’s statistical work was different. Eleven states carried out their work

independently, while the work of three states was jointly coordinated. The center only

collected, coordinated and then summarized material it received from the various state

statistical offices.757

Another worrying feature was the inefficiency of the system—the

diaocha 印度的全国抽样调查—社会经济调查 (India’s National Sample Survey—A Socio-economic

Survey).” Tongji gongzuo, 1957.09: 2-6.

756

Wang did not fail to mention that on account of ISI’s varied activities, it had become a de facto organ of

the Indian Government’s international diplomatic activities.

757

According to Wang’s reckoning, this Central Statistical Office (CSO), also set up in 1950, had 250

workers, divided into six divisions: publications, training, coordination, standardization, planning, and

national income.

305

rate of not filing reports was as high as ten to fifteen percent. Furthermore, the

incompleteness of the data remained a problem. The national income estimate had a huge

error that ranged from ten to thirty percent for different sectors of the economy. As a

result, the principal method of collecting data remained sample surveys. Besides a

decennial census, five-yearly farm and livestock census, annual census of twenty-nine

heavy industries, all other kinds of data, relating to income, production, economic

conditions in rural and urban areas, urban employment, etc., were collected using sample

surveys. The delegation was impressed with the numbers involved in statistical work and

the relative abundance of published material on sampling work. Statistical training too

seemed to be more widespread than in China. Fifteen of the thirty-three national

universities possessed departments of statistics or offered training programs and

altogether 2,000 students were engaged in the study of statistics. The ISI itself trained

advanced statisticians, focusing in equal measure on theory and practical application.

Error checking was also done meticulously and the use of machines was central to the

process. The ISI already have 250 machines and a dedicated staff of 400 to man them.

Sample surveys received the delegation’s particular attention. In this area,

“especially as far as the technology [of sampling] was concerned, [the Indians] had

carried out detailed research; and at the same time, with regard to checking the quality of

data, [they] had conducted various kinds of studies and [gained much] experience.”758

Furthermore, most of India’s statistical work relied on random sampling 随机抽样调查,

whose theoretical basis was mathematical statistics 数理统计, i.e. probability theory 几

率论. To explain the salience of sampling in particular, Wang described India as an

758

“印度在抽样调查方面，特别是关于技术方面，研究得很详细，并在资料质量的检查上，进行各

种研究和经验.” Wang Sihua1986: 97.

306

agricultural nation with over 50 million households, drawing strong links to the reality as

it obtained in the People’s Republic as well. To carry out complete enumeration would

not only require a huge number of investigators 调查员 but would also be uneconomical

这是很不经济的. And the entire process from designing a complete enumeration 普查 to

collection, analysis, and publication would take anywhere from one to two years.

Compared to this, sample surveys were much quicker and only need a small number of

investigators who would be sent to a small number of sample households 调查户.759

Wang told his readers that the Indians believed sample surveys were cheaper, quicker,

and more accurate 较经济，较快，又较正确 and that random sampling was the best

way of avoiding bias 偏见. “They believe that if the scope of the survey is very large, the

survey area very extensive, and if one wants to obtain data within a short period of time,

then the only practical and economical means of achieving this is through sampling.”760

Wang identified three major characteristics of sample surveys in India. The first

was that they were in widespread use, and often national in scope. This was significant

because India stood far ahead of other capitalist countries in its employment of sampling

technology 远非其他资本主义国家所可比拟的. National sample surveys had been

carried out in: industry, agriculture, animal husbandry, household industry, transportation,

commerce, services, as well as on urban workers’ livelihood and rural cost of living and

income. A second characteristic was that sample surveys were continuously carried out,

759

Wang also spoke of errors of two types: i) 抽样误差 (particular to sample surveys) and ii) 非抽样误差

(an error that is common to all kinds of surveys, including complete enumeration). In India, the latter kind

are relatively more, since personnel to do complete enumeration are relatively less-able, less well-trained.

See: Wang 1986: 99.

760

“他们认为抽样调查是在调查范围很大，调查地区很广，而又要在短时期内取得资料的唯一经济

可行的办法.” Wang Sihua1986: 99-100.

307

using the method of interpenetrating 交叉 samples. Accordingly, it was possible to check

and cross-check results and easily discover errors. In addition, all methods of

examination and verification, including purposive ones 典型研究, were used to raise the

quality of the data. Finally, sampling work was closely tied to policy making in India, and

so it received the attention and support of the government. To illustrate his point, he

explained that when Bengal was struck by a famine in 1943, the ISI was able to

investigate the effects of the famine in a detailed way. Wang cited other examples of the

close links between policy and sampling as well. In all cases, he asserted, useful data and

results were delivered in a timely 及时 fashion.

Having worked hard to establish the usefulness of sampling, Wang turned his

attention to recommending it for his own country:

On the basis of all that we have gained from an inspection of statistical

work in India, having consulted and followed the Soviet experience of

combining sample surveys with the periodic reporting of statistical tables,

and on the basis of the recent specific circumstances of statistical work in

our country, we offer this suggestion: vigorously/energetically launch

national scale sample surveys in our country, and extensively collect [data]

on every aspect of social and economic activity.761

[verify translation of

last phrase]

Wang bemoaned the recent status of statistical work in the PRC. On the one hand,

statistical forms were too many to the point of overflowing 太多太滥, while on the other,

the statistical materials so produced were unable to completely satisfy the needs of the

party leadership. According to him, such an irrational situation needed to be swiftly

remedied. And the only way to stop or limit the excess issuing of unscientific 不科学 or

fiscally wasteful reports by various departments was to speedily adopt the use of

761

Wang Sihua 1986: 100-101.

308

scientific sample surveys. But China’s planning apparatus was still rather rudimentary,

and its society complex. Wang conceded that the complete enumeration periodical report

system remained useful for tracking production and circulation 流通. But when it came to

economic activities on a national scale, especially those dealing with the complex issues

of allocation and expenditures, pursuit of complete enumeration at the ground level only

resulted in all the data and indicators being flooded in needless trivial details 十分繁琐.

The resultant workload was too onerous and was inconsistent with the principle of

spending less material and human resources for greater results, i.e. it was inefficient. In

conclusion, Wang declared that only by organizing specialized scientific sample surveys

could the Chinese get twice the result with half the effort 事半功倍.762

“And next year in Peking”763

At about the time that that statisticians, planners, and leaders were reading Wang Sihua’s

exhortation to adopt sample surveys, deliberations were initiated by the SSB to invite

Mahalanobis to the People’s Republic for a lecture and discussion tour. The following

month, the Foreign Ministry informed its embassy in Delhi that the State Statistics

Bureau, Peoples University, and the Economic Research Institute of the Chinese

Academy of Sciences would jointly invite Mahalanobis to the People’s Republic.764

Several months of negotiations over dates and other details followed. Sometime towards

762

Wang Sihua 1986: 101-103.

763

Unless otherwise specified, the primary source material for this section is WJB 105-00530-06. This

archival file consists of a series of 14 bulletins issued by the office in charge of handling Mahalanobis’

affairs (接待办公室), and covers his activities over the entire duration of his stay in the People’s Republic.

764

WJB 105-00530-05: 3.

309

the end of May (the letter was received 31 May 1957) the three designated host

institutions sent a letter to the State Council reporting on plans for the impending visit.765

They stated that his wife and one other statistical expert would accompany Mahalanobis

and identified two principal areas for the visiting experts to lecture on: problems relating

to statistical sample surveys 统计抽样调查问题 and the achievements of mathematical

statistics and its application in practical work 数理统计学的成就及在实际工作中的应

用问题. A memorandum from earlier in May, meant to be forwarded to Mahalanobis,

provides further details into the kinds of questions the SSB wanted to raise:

1. The concrete procedures of the sample survey concerning crop yield,

such as the criteria of selection of survey units and the adequate

number of such units.

2. How can one guarantee that the farm budget statistics as a result of

such sampling method will, on the one hand, represent the [sic]

national or provincial characteristics, and on the other hand, satisfy the

needs of the administrations on [sic] the county level? What are the

ways and means of controlling and investigating the representative

character of the sampling of such a coordinated and complex nature?

3. In order to study the economic activities such as the distribution of

income of the agricultural producers’ cooperatives, sample survey is

necessary. But how are the proper measures of sampling and the

adequate number of sample units determined? How can such sampling

be representative of the whole country and the various provinces and

at the same time satisfy the requirements of the counties?766

(Original in English)

The memorandum further observed that sampling bodies of 16,000 farm households and

6,000 industrial workers families had been selected, but wanted to know “to what other

fields should we extend such sample surveys in our country?” Another letter, dispatched

on 28 May 1957 to the Foreign Ministry by Wang Sihua himself, articulated additional

topics for forwarding to Mahalanobis: Mathematical Statistics, its concrete uses and its

765

WJB 105-00530-05: 13-18.

766

WJB 105-00530-06: 11.

310

development trends, India’s experience with planning nation-wide sample surveys, and

[Statistical] Quality control of industrial products in India.

In return, the SSB acknowledged that Mahalanobis hoped to resolve three

requests of his own while in the People’s Republic. The first was to organize visiting

students who would travel to India for study; the second was to have specialists sent to

the Indian Statistical Institute to help with translating materials from the Chinese; and the

third was that he was interested in understanding the training of health services personnel

in China. The letter went on to acknowledge that Mahalanobis was not just India’s

premier statistician, and the moving intellectual force behind its second five-year plan,

but also that he enjoyed much international fame 享有国际名誉. In receiving him an

attitude of sincere and genuine friendship was to be adopted, thereby advancing Sino-

Indian friendship generally, and closer ties in statistical science in particular. Ideological

differences ought to be set aside. The guiding principle would be to “seek common

ground while accepting differences” 求同存异原则. The Chinese would learn with an

open mind 虚心 and both achievements and shortcomings were to be presented honestly.

A list of preparatory materials, including published statistics, was drawn up so that they

could be presented to the visitors for context and background.767

Wang Sihua was

designated the leader of the team responsible for the visitors’ reception.768

767

These included materials on National Income, statistical data on the achievements of socialist

construction, Farm Family income, Nation-wide workers family income, and other materials that

Mahalanobis may request, assuming they were deemed safe to share.

768

Other members included: Huang Jianta 黄剑拓 (Head of the Agriculture Statistics Department 农业司

长), Di Chaobai 狄超白 (head of the Economics Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences),

Qi Luming 祁鹿鸣 (Director of Renmin University’s Statistical Planning Department), Dai Shiguang 戴世

光 (Renmin University professor) and six others.

311

Mahalanobis entered the People’s Republic via Shenzhen on the morning of 19

June 1957. By three in the afternoon of the same day the party arrived in the southern

metropolis of Guangzhou (formerly Canton).769

Accompanying him were his wife and the

noted statistician and specialist in sampling methodology, D.B. Lahiri. The following

morning they visited the Sanyuanli Agricultural Production Cooperative within the city

and “saw the system of maintaining the village statistical records, and got acquainted

with the method of “purposive sampling” (on the Soviet model) which was being

extensively used for estimating agricultural production and for family budget

enquiries.”770

Later that day Cheng Yingzhong 陈应中, the director of the Guangdong

Statistical Bureau, and Guo Ling 郭凌, the director of the Guangzhou Statistics Bureau,

gave Mahalanobis and Lahiri a short presentation on the nature of sampling work done in

the province and city. They laid out the methods used to estimate agricultural production

and rural and urban incomes and livelihood measures. Mahalanobis was immediately

suspicious when told that the error in the sample surveys was barely two percent. He

remarked that for such [purposive] sample surveys the error ought to be much higher,

adding that in the Soviet Union it was of the order of fifteen percent, in the United States

twelve percent, and in countries such as Germany and Japan it was above ten percent.

The only way to carry out reliable surveys was to use random sampling 随机抽样, he

exclaimed.

769

Unless otherwise specified, the primary source material for Mahalanobis’ activities is WJB 105-00530-

06. This archival file consists of a series of 14 bulletins issued by the office in charge of handling his affairs

(接待办公室), and covers the entire duration of his stay in the People’s Republic.

770

P.C. Mahalanobis. Some Impressions of a Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957: 1. PCMMMA, Kolkata.

312

Over dinner later that evening Mahalanobis urged his hosts not to be too dogmatic

in their approach to statistics. He told them that India had a few statistical methods which

could greatly benefit a newly reborn socialist nation like China. Being newly reborn had

significant advantages he explained: “even though the Soviet Union was the first nation

to establish socialism, many of its statistical methods are too old and not easy to change

anymore.” Indeed, this was exactly like England, whose “railways had the longest history

in the world, and yet today [they] are the oldest and [therefore] rather difficult to alter.”771

Through his visits to the Soviet Union and his numerous interactions with its leading

statisticians and economists Mahalanobis was well aware of the status of statistical

research and work there. Three years earlier, he had written to Pitambar Pant that, “one

orthodox viewpoint in USSR has been to exclude mathematics from economics; to insist

on statistics to be almost exclusively the handmaiden of economics; and to separate

mathematical statistics as a separate (and somewhat abstract) subject under probability

and mathematics.”772

Since then he had had time to further understand developments in

the Soviet Union. In his unpublished report of his China tour, he explained:

This dichotomy became at one stage particularly rigid in USSR partly due

to the conservation [sic] of older statisticians (who were mostly

economists lacking the knowledge of statistical mathematics) and partly to

the antagonism of a certain school of thought which objected to the use of

“abstract” mathematical methods in biology and agriculture. Soviet

mathematicians (among whom Kolmogorov is recognized all over the

world as the greatest expert in the theory of probability of the present age,

who has supplied the rigorous mathematical foundations of modern

statistical theory) and mathematical statisticians have, of course, always

recognized the superiority of “random or probability sampling” and have

always advocated its use in sample surveys. During the last 3 or 4 years

771

WJB 105-00530-06: 3.

772

Letter from PCM to Pitambar Pant dated July 3 1954. Papers of Pitambar Pant (190 LII). NMML, New

Delhi, p. 49.

313

this question is being increasingly debated in USSR. From published

reports of the proceedings of scientific and statistical conferences as well

as from personal discussions with Soviet statisticians I have the

impression that opinion is turning increasingly in favour of “random or

probability sampling.” Statistical practice in USSR, however, still

continues to be based on “purposive sampling.”773

[Emphasis added.]

Whether Chinese statisticians were aware of this ferment in Soviet statistical circles is a

moot point. Much like in the Soviet Union, statistical practice in the People’s Republic

had not moved towards any reconciliation with mathematical statistics. But Mahalanobis’

presence in the People’s Republic suggests that the Chinese were aware of the limitations

imposed by their methodology. And discussions over the following three weeks would

indeed indicate to him that the Chinese were “keeping an open mind” to the possibilities

offered by mathematical statistics.774

Xue Muqiao’s Briefing

The following day, on 21 June, Mahalanobis and company flew to Beijing, arriving in the

capital at three in the afternoon. The welcoming committee at the airport was a veritable

who’s who of statistical luminaries of the People’s Republic and included Xue Muqiao,

the director of the SSB, as well as the familiar faces of Wang Sihua and Dai Shiguang.

Wang and Dai personally accompanied the visitor’s to the Beijing Hotel, where they were

to be put up. Over the course of the next day Mahalanobis and Lahiri met with

representatives of the three host institutions, to decide upon the goals and tasks for the

coming weeks. In addition to offering his knowledge and experience, Mahalanobis was 773

P.C. Mahalanobis. Some Impressions of a Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957: 5. PCMMA, Kolkata.

Later in his trip he would also inform his Chinese hosts that ever since 1947 the Soviet Union had not

attended any sample surveys activities organized by the International Statistical Institute. They just didn’t

attach importance to mathematical statistics. See: WJB 105-00530-06: 15.

774

P.C. Mahalanobis. Some Impressions of a Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957: 6. PCMMA, Kolkata.

314

keen to learn about all aspects of socialist construction in the People’s Republic. He

naturally had an interest in statistics and the statistical system, but his long list of

questions and topics touched upon all aspects of planning, training of personnel, and

national income. He was also keen to get his hands on a copy of the Peoples Republic’s

‘Twelve Year Plan for Scientific Research,’ which had been announced the previous

year.775

When it came to discussing his lectures, Mahalanobis wanted to know the general

level of the audience, so that he could better calibrate the technical parts of his

explanations. A formal welcoming party was thrown for the visitors on the evening of the

23rd

with an even bigger and more impressive list of Chinese statistical luminaries in

attendance. In his welcome speech at the party, Xue Muqiao stressed the advances India

had made in developing and applying sample surveys. It was precisely this experience

that the People’s Republic wanted to mine, and therefore, had invited Mahalanobis, or

Prof. Ma, as he came to be called, to visit. The usual pleasantries from both sides

followed. At the end of the evening, D.B. Lahiri turned to his interpreter and expressed

the hope that future dinners would be smaller in scale so that more meaningful

conversations could be had. The strongly political flavor 政治味道 of such parties had

made him uncomfortable.776

The delegation’s work began in earnest on 24th

June with a briefing by Xue

Muqiao on statistical work in the People’s Republic.777

Xue explained that over the

775

This last request seems to have been denied. See: WJB 105-00530-06: 77. In general, a decision had

been taken to freely share those materials and data that were already in the public domain. Requests for

data that were not would be handled on a case by case basis. Statistical data was still considered secret in

the People’s Republic, and as a result, many of Mahalanobis’ requests were eventually denied.

776

WJB 105-00530-06: 10.

777

Much of the day on Sunday, June 23 was lost as Mahalanobis came down with a stomach ailment.

Lahiri took the opportunity to visit the Great Wall at Badaling and the Ming Tombs.

315

course of the preceding five years an integrated statistical system modeled on that of the

Soviet Union had been set up and reached down to the level of village cooperatives all

over the People’s Republic. With a staff of about 650 personnel, the SSB headquarters

served as the apex body of this system and was responsible for collection and auditing of

all statistical data and its subsequent delivery, as required, to various government

agencies. Below it, at the provincial level, were statistical offices that coordinated and

guided work across the roughly 2,200 counties 县 in the country. Under the counties were

the village 乡 administrations, which coordinated the statistical work of about 750,000

village cooperatives. At this level, much of the work was carried out by part-time workers.

In line with the Soviet model, the scope of statistics was “comprehensive” and covered

population, agriculture, industry, transport, trade, consumption, health, education, finance,

national income, employment, and so on. Unlike the Soviet Union, though, the provincial

statistical bureaus were under the administrative control of the Provincial People’s

Councils and their expenses were paid out of provincial budgets. Xue explained that this

made the Chinese system more administratively decentralized but he still felt that it was

“probably as integrated as the Soviet system.”778

Xue then proceeded to explain the methodology employed by the SSB. The

preferred choice was complete enumeration. This worked rather well in several sectors.

In the industrial sector, 3,000 units sent monthly returns and another 60,000 units

submitted annual report. In construction, about a 1000 of the most important projects

reported monthly, with the rest doing so on an annual basis. Reports from the railways,

shipping, and trucking were submitted monthly, as were government purchase and the

778

P.C. Mahalanobis. Some Impressions of a Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957: 1-3. PCMMMA,

Kolkata.

316

consumption of important commodities. The agricultural sector, however, posed a much

larger problem. Data of interest included area sown, yield per unit area, “outturn” of

important agricultural crops, livestock, and so on. The provincial bureaus had their hands

full trying to completely enumerate the 750,000 village cooperatives. Delays were the

norm, and the accuracy of the results was not always high. As a result, in 1955, an initial

attempt was made to calculate the yield of crops per unit area over a large part of the

country using sample survey techniques. In addition, sample surveys had been carried out

in order to better assess the standard of living of rural, working class, and urban

households. For instance, a rural survey in 1955 had covered 15,000 farm families across

twenty-three provinces and an urban survey in 1956 had included 6,000 families. Xue

clarified that the technology used was purposive sampling, and concluded by observing

that through increased contact with India, and in particular following the Wang Sihua

delegation’s visit to India, the Chinese had become particularly interested in learning

from India’s expertise and experience in carrying out sample surveys.779

At the end of the

briefing, Lahiri , apparently so frustrated at the People’s Republic’s refusal hitherto to

adopt more advanced sample survey techniques, pointedly told his interpreter that he

couldn’t fathom why the Chinese lacked confidence 信心不足 in sample surveys. 780

Mahalanobis would later claim that after this “brilliant survey,” both he and Lahiri had a

much clearer sense of why the Chinese “were so deeply interested in sample surveys and

mathematical statistics.”781

779

Much of the description in the above two paragraphs is from: P.C. Mahalanobis. Some Impressions of a

Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957: 3-4. PCMMA, Kolkata.

780

See: WJB 105-00530-06: 16.

781

P.C. Mahalanobis. Some Impressions of a Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957: 1. PCMMMA, Kolkata.

317

“Quite a heavy programme”

With their brief firmly established, Mahalanobis and Lahiri set about preparing their

lectures. Over the course of the following two weeks Lahiri and Mahalanobis led eight

group discussions on sample surveys and delivered a total of nine lectures. The group

discussions usually lasted from three to four hours and were frequently quite technical in

nature. Of the nine lectures, Mahalanobis delivered five and Lahiri four. In the lead-up to

each lecture, both of them had to prepare a synopsis, which was translated and pre-

circulated, leading Mahalanobis to remark: “this was quite a heavy programme.” The

lectures were usually day long affairs, divided into two three-and-a-half hour sections.

Mahalanobis delivered two lectures on “Sample Surveys” at the SSB, one on “Planning

in India” at the Planning Commission, and two on “Recent Developments in the Theory

and Applications of Mathematical Statistics” at Beijing and Peoples Universities. For

most of these lectures the audience, comprising as many as 300 people, included

statisticians, economists, senior mathematical students, and members of the mathematical

staff of the two universities.782

Lahiri’s four lectures were similar in format, though he

spoke exclusively on “Applications of the Theory of Mathematical Probability in Sample

Surveys.” Two of these were delivered at the SSB, one at Peoples University, and one at

the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Lahiri’s lectures, in particular, were especially

technical and the audience was restricted to thirty to thirty-five persons familiar with

statistical work and knowledgeable in mathematics.783

782

Ni Jiaxun, then an undergraduate at Peoples University recalled attending one of these lectures.

According to him, most in the audience did not follow much of what was said. He remembered it as an

important event at the University, however.

783

P.C. Mahalanobis. Some Impressions of a Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957: 6-7. PCMMMA,

Kolkata. On Lahiri’s lectures, the SSB Bulletin from July 5 stated that there were over twenty people

318

On the 24 June, after Xue finished his briefing, Mahalanobis had offered a three

stage strategy for the discussions. Each successive stage would only be entered once he

had received the approval of his audience. If it became necessary, he even offered to

extend his stay in Beijing and cancel sightseeing tours to create additional time for

discussions and lectures. In the first stage he wanted to introduce the general principles of

sampling 一般原则的介绍. If everyone was satisfied with this discussion, he would

proceed, in the next stage, to discuss these principles with much greater thoroughness 详

尽的讨论这些原理. The final stage would be more practically oriented: starting with a

particular province they would try and draft a detailed and concrete sampling program 从

一省开始试拟详细具体的抽样调查方案.784

Having clarified this plan, Mahalanobis

began stage one. He spoke about what a sample 样本 was, about errors 误差, the survey

object 调查对象, the differences between random sampling 随机调查 and purposive

sampling 典型调查, outlined their histories, and so on. In discussing the overall structure

of statistical work, he stressed the importance of scientific and intellectual freedom and

the need to engage with other disciplines since statistics was essentially an applied

science. He also spoke of the importance of training. By this he meant training at all

levels, and not just middle school students who could become statistical workers. Just as

important was the training of statistical researchers and instructors. To make his point

clearer he drew comparisons with the operation of a hospital. “The medical school must

maintain an intimate relationship with the hospital. Similarly, statistical research organs

present and that the “discussion was a little too specialized, a little too technical in nature.” (谈得比较专门

一些，技术性大一些). See: WJB 105-00530-06: 62-63.

784

WJB 105-00530-06: 18.

319

must remain in touch with the organs carrying out actual statistical work.”785

Based on

the experience gained in India, he estimated that if the Chinese were to conduct a national

sample survey with the sole purpose of satisfying the center’s requirements, then all they

needed were 1,200 surveyors. If, at the same time, they also wanted to satisfy the needs

of the various provinces, then 2,500 would be required.786

On the morning of 27 June, Mahalanobis delivered his first lecture on Sample

Surveys at the SSB and followed that up with a second one the next afternoon. On both

days the audience numbered around 300. At the end of the second day Xue reported that

even though the lecture was at times too specialized, it was still very helpful for the entire

audience.787

The next day, which happened to be Mahalanobis’ birthday, both he and

Lahiri continued group discussion on sample surveys at the SSB.788

The previous day

Mahalanobis had also handed over a much more detailed list of questions regarding

planning and statistical work in the People’s Republic. This list contained a total of

seventy-three items and covered topics such as the organization of long term planning,

the structure of planning, the technology used and its improvement, population and labor,

gross domestic product and national income, production of goods, natural resources, trade,

capital goods industries, the training of scientific personnel, and so on. The final item was

potential Sino-Indian cooperation on planning and statistical matters.789

After a day of

rest, preparation, and sightseeing, the discussions continued on the afternoon of the 1st of

785

WJB 105-00530-06: 22.

786

WJB 105-00530-06: 20.

787

WJB 105-00530-06: 31-35.

788

WJB 105-00530-06: 36-37.

789

WJB 105-00530-06: 38-48.

320

July at the State Planning Commission. On the 2nd

of July Mahalanobis delivered a

lecture on the Indian planning experience. This lecture was attended by over 250 people

from the State Planning Commission, Economic Commission, Peoples University,

Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the SSB. Mahalanobis also delivered lectures to

similarly large audiences at Beijing and People’s Universities on 5 and 6 July on the

subject of “The development of mathematical statistics and its applications in the social

sciences.”790

Mahalanobis and Lahiri then held independent group discussions over the

next few days, visiting the three host institutions as well as the Bureau of Public Health.

The principal content of all the lectures and group discussions—the lecture

synopses, lecture transcripts, subsequent questions and answers, as well as the minutes

from the group discussion—was compiled, translated, edited, and published in a year

later in May 1958 by the Statistical Press. 791

The foreword of this publication granted

that there were specific points on which the Indians and the Chinese did not see eye to

eye, but advocated that in spite of those differences, the Chinese needed to pay greater

attention to the science and technique of sample surveys. The book was produced,

therefore, as a reference for future research and discussions on mathematical statistics

and sampling. Its distribution, however, was most likely limited to statistical bureaus and

offices across the country. Whether it entered curricula at teaching institutions or was

used in any other specific way remains unclear.792

790

WJB 105-00530-06: 64-67.

791

State Statistics Bureau. Yindu mahalanuobisi jiaoshou fanghua tongji baogaoji 印度马哈拉诺比斯教授

访华统计报告集 (Report on the visit to China of the Indian Statistician, Prof. Mahalanobis). Beijing:

China Statistical Press, 1958.

792

Underneath the title were the characters neibu faxing (restricted publication).

321

The discussions as well as the visits to statistical organs and various bureaus left a

rather favorable impression on Mahalanobis.793

K. Natwar Singh, then a young attaché in

the Indian Embassy, met Mahalanobis on July 5th and found him “a forthright and

interesting man,” who was “pessimistic about the implementation of our Five Year Plan.”

Mahalanobis told him “that the Chinese were ahead of us [Indians]. Their implementation

was first rate.”794

Indeed Mahalanobis found much to admire in what he saw. He wrote

later that he felt their lectures and discussions,

Were really appreciated and might lead to some fruitful results. We were

deeply impressed by the seriousness of the purpose with which the

Chinese discussed these questions and by the amount of details into which

the entered to clear up obscure points and to formulate a concrete program

of work.”795

The Chinese had repeatedly told him that China had a “clean sheet of paper before her in

the field of statistics, and was therefore in the fortunate position of adopting the best

methods from all over the world.”796

This may have been particularly appealing to his

catholic mind. Mahalanobis was also generally trusting of the quality and accuracy of the

published and unpublished statistical materials he had been shown, noting:

“We were favorably impressed not only by the size of the statistical

organization but also by the wide range and internal consistency (which

we had occasion to test in some cases) of Chinese statistics. Changes in

production, income, employment, etc., from year to year (1952-56) should

793

Mahalanobis was impressed with the People’s Republic in general. See: P.C. Mahalanobis. Some

Impressions of a Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957: 13. PCMMMA, Kolkata.

794

K. Natwar Singh is an Indian politician and a former Cabinet Minister. Before joining politics, he was a

member of the Indian Foreign Service for 31 years. Among his earliest assignments was a three year stint in

Beijing, from 1956 to 1958. For more, see: K. Natwar Singh. My China Diary 1956-88. New Delhi: Rupa

& Co., 2009, 65-66.

795

P.C. Mahalanobis. Some Impressions of a Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957: 11. PCMMMA,

Kolkata.

796

P.C. Mahalanobis. Some Impressions of a Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957: 7. PCMMMA, Kolkata.

322

be quite reliable and comparable. The statistical position (with the

exception of sample surveys and mathematical statistics) seems to be

appreciably better than that in India in respect of coverage, availability,

and accuracy of data required for purposes of planning and current policy

decisions. It is, therefore, possible to use Chinese official statistics with

confidence for a general appraisal of economic conditions in China.”797

Meeting Vice-Premiers and the Premier

Mahalonobis had the opportunity to express his admiration for the general progress the

People’s Republic appeared to be making to its leaders on two separate occasions. On

July 3rd

Mahalanobis and Lahiri met with the Vice-Premiers Li Fuchun and Bo Yibo 薄

一波.798

Li and Bo were also chairmen of the Planning and Economic Commissions

respectively and Li was also the Minister for Statistics. At the meeting, which began at

9:50 in the morning and lasted for approximately an hour and a half, Mahalanobis told

the Vice-Premiers that on general statistical work he had little advice to offer. He

regarded China as being far ahead of India when it came to building a socialist society,

and statistical work as a concomitant part of that, was also more advanced than in India.

But Mahalanobis did want to specifically offer advice on linking planning and statistical

work more closely, and promoted the widespread adoption of sample surveys through the

setting up of a dedicated sampling bureau. He reiterated the advantages of sampling—

that it was faster, more accurate, its error easier to ascertain, and cheaper. With a national

scale sample survey in place, he claimed one would only need four to eight weeks to get a

sense of economic development and socio-economic conditions across the country. On

specific techniques, he recommended the use of interpenetrating samples 交叉抽样 and

797

P.C. Mahalanobis. Some Impressions of a Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957: 12-13. PCMMMA,

Kolkata.

798

WJB 105-00530-06: 53-60.

323

probability sampling 机率抽样. Given China’s 2,200 counties, Mahalanobis estimated

that the sampling bureau could begin with a staff of about 2,000. Work could initially

begin in five or six provinces, and as it intensified each county would be assigned two

surveyors on average, resulting in total staff numbering between four and five thousand.

Transcribers, computers (humans), and statisticians would, of course, also be required.

Mahalanobis urged that a training institute along the lines of the ISI be set up, so that not

just statistical workers, but also a highly specialized cadre of statisticians could be trained.

This institute would also foster closer ties with the Chinese Academy of Science, and

more generally, between statistics and the disciplines of mathematics and economics—

“this was the way of the future.”

Li and Bo were very receptive to Mahalanobis’ suggestions. They requested that

he bring them up during his conversation with the Premier later in the week as well. Both

Li and Bo were particularly keen to see sample survey work begin as soon as possible.

And yet, lingering doubts about sampling technology remained. Li specifically enquired

whether “on the matter of the accuracy of sample surveys, Prof. Ma could once more

carry out discussions with the SSB.”799

Bo wondered if India could send a specialist or

two to help with a sample survey of cotton production in Hebei that he wanted to see

carried out in September or October. Mahalanobis replied that September target date was

too soon and wouldn’t allow enough time for planning the survey. Better preparation

would be to carry out pilot surveys on the paddy crop. He also recommended that they

immediately send one or two people to the ISI so that planning for such work could begin.

799

WJB 105-00530-06: 53-60, 57.

324

Mahalanobis also took the opportunity to reiterate his specific proposals for

enhanced Sino-Indian cooperation in statistics and planning. He requested that the

Planning Commission and the SSB arrange for the regular forwarding of technical data to

the Indians. He suggested that a small “China Unit” be set up at the ISI. This group

would help translate into English important Chinese publications, articles and technical

data, teach Chinese to a few statisticians and professors, and maintain direct links with

Beijing. To man this unit he requested one or two people be sent over, and assured that

all their costs would be borne by the Indian side, and that they would be treated as guests.

In return, he offered to happily share materials for the teaching of statistics, and also

impart training to those Chinese who visit the ISI. The hope was that three to four people

would be sent to India for further study and that this would later become an annual

practice. Indian specialists in statistics on sample surveys, mathematical statistics and

other areas, could also be sent to help in further research, training or the drafting of

technical schemes.800

Li and Bo agreed with this advice and indicated that the details

could be worked out with Xue Muqiao and Wang Sihua, both of whom were also present

at the meeting.

About a week later, on 9 July, Mahalanobis, his wife, and Lahiri were invited to

dinner with Zhou Enlai.801

Xue Muqiao and Wang Sihua were also present, as were the

Indian ambassador, R.K. Nehru and Mrs. R.K. Nehru. Mahalanobis repeated much of

what he had told Li and Bo. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that Zhou had been

kept informed of his activities and had “studied some of the rather technical points in my

800

WJB 105-00530-06: 47-48.

801

WJB 105-00530-06: 68-71.

325

recommendations as he asked some searching and critical questions on the methods of

assessing the accuracy of the results of sample surveys.”802

The Premier agreed in

principle with most of Mahalanobis’ suggestions. The setting up of an institute might take

some time, he observed, since the People’s Republic still lacked enough trained personnel.

But he welcomed Indian help in the organization of statistical work and research, and

expressed interest in continuing the exchange of personnel, expertise, and experience. He

also told Mahalanobis that while it may be difficult to send experts immediately to lecture

on Chinese statistics and planning, the two SSB staffers that would be sent later in the

year could help get the work of the Chinese Unit started. The dinner was a pleasant affair

and was subsequently reported upon in the People’s Daily with an accompanying

photograph of the group.803

As the trip wound down, both sides threw farewell parties,

the Chinese one much grander than the smaller affair the Indians organized at the Beijing

Hotel. Continuing cooperation was the buzzword. On 12 July Mahalanobis and company

left the People’s Republic the same way they had entered, via Shenzhen, assured that

exchanges and future cooperation had been put on a solid footing.

Domestic Difficulties

A couple of months after Mahalanobis’ return to India, Wang Sihua addressed the

Conference on National Statistical Work. His speech, titled “Report of An Inspection of

Statistical Work in India,” started by referring his audience to his article from earlier in

802

P.C. Mahalanobis. Some Impressions of a Visit to China 19 June – 11 July 1957: 10. PCMMMA,

Kolkata.

803

Renmin ribao 10 July 1957, p. 1 (“周总理接见印统计学家马哈拉诺比斯”).

326

the year.804

Wang stated that he had already covered the general outlines of statistical

work in India in that piece and would not revisit trodden terrain. Instead, he wanted to

focus exclusively on sample surveys. His report was less enthusiastic, more guarded, and

more strategic than his February article.

Wang now took pains to stress that Mahalanobis was aware not only of Soviet

statistics, but that he also knew that Chinese statistics were largely a product of learning

from Soviet experience. Furthermore, Mahalanobis, he assured his listeners, actually

thought very highly 评价还很高 of the Chinese periodical report system. It was only in

those instances where original records 原始记录 were missing, or where the numbers

were too large and too many, such as in matters relating to the people’s livelihood, that

the use of sample surveys was recommended. As a socialist country, Wang

acknowledged, the People’s Republic should of course use a system of complete

enumeration as the main methodology, but it was also important to study other methods,

something which had not been done sufficiently before. He then addressed the doubts,

fears, and criticisms head on:

“There are those who are suspicious: Does our visit to India mean that we

have changed our policy of learning from the Soviet Union? Such an

understanding is in error. Our India visit and Prof. Ma’s [Mahalanobis’]

coming to the People’s Republic absolutely do not mean that we have

abandoned [a policy of] learning from the Soviet Union. In reality, sample

surveys have already been in use in the Soviet Union from an early time. It

can be confidently stated: in the past, today, and in the future, we want to

learn from the Soviet Union. But, at the same time, we must also study

those methods of capitalist countries that are relatively good, especially

the methods of sample surveys and the problems relating to statistical

technology [check translation of this]. As far as method is concerned, not

just India, if other capitalist countries have even better methods, we can

804

Wang Sihua 1986: 90-97.

327

study those as well. Our study’s goal is to provide better service in the

construction of a socialist society.805

Wang then went on to outline the nature of sampling work in the Soviet Union, providing

evidence of its use for decades. He reminded everyone that Soviet specialists were the

ones to design the rural livelihood survey 农家收支调查. It was only after this that he

began a detailed discussion of India’s sampling work, concluding with a list of four

advantages. The first of these was that the scale and nature of sample surveying in India

were larger and more expansive than in England, the United States, and other capitalist

countries. The second was that Indians had made new contributions to the technology of

sample surveys, namely the methods of continuous sampling 连续抽样 and

interpenetrating samples 交叉抽样. Thirdly, they had carried out detailed comparative

research and experimentation on various survey methods. Finally, the contents of the

surveys were tailored to meet practical requirements. [Check last bit for whether meaning

has been translated properly].806

What was known to Wang and many of his comrades in Beijing had to be

communicated more effectively, and subtly, to the various regional representatives at the

conference, and through them to the vast numbers of statistical workers across the

country. This was that sample surveys were a general category that included purposive

sampling as well as random sampling. And what was new and particularly relevant to the

People’s Republic were the Indian random sampling methods, not the prevailing Soviet

methods. Wang adopted a two-stage strategy to bring this point home, without actually

805

Wang Sihua 1986: 91.

806

Wang Sihua 1986: 94.

328

stating it. He first differentiated sample survey from complete enumeration, highlighting

advantages already familiar to us: sample surveys were cheaper, required fewer personnel,

and that since their scale was smaller than complete enumeration, they could accordingly

accommodate many more indices and much greater complexity.807

Having established the

usefulness of sample surveys, Wang proceeded to differentiate what he called subjective

主观 sampling from random or stochastic 随机 sampling. For this purpose he again

resorted to a laundry list of advantages: (1) if the survey design is good, it can completely

reflect every characteristic of the totality, (2) random sampling avoids the subjective

influence of the surveyor, and is therefore more accurate, (3) subjective sampling only

allows for one or two indices 指标 unlike random sampling which allows all indices to be

used [check this translation], (4) random sampling is more objective, (5) random

sampling is a simple and easy method, and (6) random sampling can provide accurate

estimates of sampling error, and allows for the estimation of the accuracy of the overall

survey.808

But he did not advocate the abandonment of other forms of sampling. As long

as a method was scientific it ought to be used. What then was the definition of scientific?

For Wang, “[a method] was scientific only if it could truly reflect the objective real

situation.”809

Thus, subjective sampling, under the right conditions of the Party’s Mass

Work Line 群众工作路线, could be scientific too. He further comforted his audience by

invoking the authority of Mahalanobis himself:

In the past some comrades believed that the difference between purposive

surveys and sample surveys rested on whether it was random or not. But,

807

Wang Sihua 1968: 95.

808

Wang Sihua 1986: 95-96.

809

Wang Sihua 1986: 96.

329

on the basis of Prof. Ma’s introduction [to sampling], even within

sampling there can exist subjectivity. Setting aside random sampling, to

varying degrees both mechanical sampling and sampling by classification

have subjective elements. Therefore, I believe the principle difference

between sample surveys and purposive surveys lies in that sample surveys

use a small number of objects [对象—find more accurate translation for

this] to calculate the entire object. That is, the entire sample must represent

the whole and the totality [全及总体]. [On the other hand,] the principal

goal of purposive surveys is not to analogize for the totality.810

Wang pointed out that the method of purposive (or typical) surveys had not been

effective in the past because the selection of typical cases 选典 had not reflected the

objective reality. The task, as it lay before them, was to carry out small scale experiments

to find out which method would be most suitable.

The transformation from February to September was stark. From the vigorous

promotion of establishing nation-wide sample surveys, the mood had shifted to one of

qualified, even muted, endorsement. After several years of denigrating ‘capitalist’

statistics, Wang had uncharacteristically written favorably about them in February. This

speech, seven months later, suggests he did not strike enough of a conciliatory tone in the

earlier article and, therefore, had to make amends. Indeed, Wang’s speech at the

conference can be read as an exercise in persuasion meant to assuage reactionary cadre

who feared not just ideological compromises, but perhaps even more importantly, being

shifted out of their comfort zones and established statistical practices and habits. Larger

domestic political currents also no doubt played their part. Starting with the Hundred

Flowers movement in 1956 and through May 1957 when free expression by intellectuals

was encouraged, the political climate had been relatively conducive to the exploration of

new possibilities. In June 1957 the Anti-Rightist campaign began, leading to the

810

Wang Sihua 1986: 96.

330

narrowing of those possibilities, and no doubt, to the much more cautious tone that we

find Wang adopting in September. A couple of months later the xiafang [下放]

movement began with cadres being sent to factories and villages to work with their hands.

The movement was later extended to intellectuals as well. Under the circumstances,

advocating capitalist methods could no longer just be a matter of their scientific-ness.

The Study Tour of 1958811

It was in this somewhat confused milieu, where intellectuals and city-dwellers faced the

prospect of manual labor in the countryside, that Wu Hui 吴辉 and Gong Jianyao 龚鉴尧

found themselves on a mission to India. Wu, born in 1926 [verify], and Gong, in 1927,

had received degrees in statistics from Chongqing and Nanjing Universities respectively

in 1950. They were part of a whole generation that had been introduced to and trained

under an inclusive understanding of statistics, which drew from texts and materials from

the United States, Britain, as well as the Soviet Union. After 1949, they had to recalibrate

their training to serve the newer and narrower definition of statistics within the People’s

Republic. By the mid-1950s both were working at the SSB headquarters in Beijing. Gong

was assigned to the agricultural statistics division and Wu to the industrial statistics one.

In 1957 they were among ten young cadres shortlisted for additional testing to determine

who would be sent to India. Each shortlisted candidate was made to write an essay

demonstrating their English language skills. In the end, Wu and Gong’s facility with the

language coupled with their specializations in the key areas of focus—industrial and

agricultural statistics—won out. 811

Unless otherwise noted, this section draws primarily on oral history interviews conducted with Gong

Jianyao and Wu Hui. I met Wu in Beijing on 8 September 2011. I met Gong, who lives in Guangzhou, a

week later on 14 September 2011.

331

Wu Hui and Gong Jianyao arrived in Calcutta on January 4 1958. They were

immediately invited by Mahalanobis to travel to Madras (present day Chennai) to attend

a conference on statistical work and planning [find details]. Upon their return to Calcutta,

they began their studies at the Indian Statistical Institute. Their official status was that of

Visiting Scholars (访问学者 fangwen xuezhe). At that time, the ISI had several tens of

students form various Asian countries who were receiving training at the International

Statistical Education Centre (ISEC). As visiting scholars Wu and Gong’s status was

different from these students and they did not attend classes. Instead, they were given

study spaces and permitted to conduct their own independent reading and research. The

primary focus of their work was the study of Indian sampling techniques. This they began

by reading all previous documents and publications relating to the ISI’s statistical

sampling activities, which were held in the ISI library. From there, they moved to a close

study of the theory and methods of sampling. In the process, they studied simple random

sampling, stratified random sampling, cluster sampling, double sampling, multi-stage

sampling, and other sampling methods. Periodically, they would meet with Mahalanobis,

Lahiri or C.R. Rao and discuss progress made and problems encountered.812

D.B. Lahiri,

in particular, was their principal guide and interlocutor throughout their studies. Exposure

to the latest Western texts on statistics and sampling rounded off their readings.

812

Both Wu and Gong recalled Mahalanobis fondly, observing that he left a rather deep impression on

them. In a 2001 article published in the China Statistics, Gong went so far as to claim that two professor

Mas had played a hugely inspirational and instrumental role in his life. The first, he told his readers, was

Professor Ma Yinchu 马寅初 (1882-1982), the well-known economist and one time President of Beijing

University, persecuted during the late 1950s for his championing of birth control. The second Prof. Ma was

none other than Mahalanobis himself. See: Gong Jianyao 龚鉴尧. “Shidao qinghuai 师道情怀 (Sentiments

from a Career in Teaching).” China Statistics 中国统计, (May 2001): 52-54.

332

While the bulk of their work was theoretical or centered on book-learning and

based at the ISI, Wu and Gong also had the opportunity to gain first hand experience in

the practice of sampling by participating in two sample surveys. The first of these was a

land use sample surveys where they witnessed the Mahalanobis devised method of

cutting circular crop samples in the fields. The second was a family budget survey carried

out in Calcutta. Other activities included sitting in on meetings of the National Sample

Survey (NSS) where sampling teams would report their recent experiences, problems,

and discuss solutions for the next round of the NSS. Both Wu and Gong also had the

opportunity to interact with the various Indian and foreign statisticians present at the ISI

during 1958. Both remembered, in particular, the visit of the Soviet statistician A. Ezhov,

who had served as the first Soviet statistical expert to the PRC from 1950 to 1952.813

Gong also became close friends with C.R. Rao, who at that time ran the ISI’s training

school [verify]. During the year, both of them visited Bombay, Pune and Delhi, as well as

several paddy and jute sample survey sites across the country.814

While in Delhi, they

also met with Pitambar Pant, who was still serving on the Indian Planning Commission.

During the exactly one year and five days that Gong and Wu spent in India,

events within the People’s Republic had pushed statistics, as they had just about

everything else, in new directions. Gong recalled reading about the Great Leap Forward

in the papers, and receiving letters from friends and family describing the push towards

communes. Wu also remembered discussing the agricultural growth results of the Great

813

For more on Ezhov, see Part I Chapter II.

814

Gong Jianyao 龚鉴尧. “Woguo chouyangfa yanjiu yu shijian de fazhan 我国抽样法研究与实践的发展

(Development of the Research and Practice of Sampling in our Country).” Xi’an tongji xueyuan xuebao 西

安统计学院学报 9, no. 2 (1994): 7-14, 10.

333

Leap Forward, claiming that Gong was openly suspicious of them. Statistics too, they

were informed in time, was changing. In August 1958 an “on-the-spot meeting” 现场会

议 was held in the town of Baoding, just south of Beijing.815

At this meeting, statistical

work carried out by the SSB over the previous seven years was repudiated, and a call was

made for a Great Leap Forward in statistics as well. The logic was straightforward:

[With] the collectivization of peasant production and consumption, all

[statistical] data could basically be obtained [directly] from the communes.

The peasant family revenue and expenditure survey, which had been set

up on the basis of surveys of sample households, had fulfilled its historical

obligation/role [历史使命].816

In one fell swoop, established statistical systems, including the purposive sampling

already carried out, as well as future potential surveys based on random sampling, were

all consigned to history. The Sino-Indian exchanges and much touted statistical

cooperation too were to become a victim of this development. Towards the end of their

India stint, Wu and Gong had worked hard to draft a lengthy report of their activities in

India and their recommendations for future statistical work in China. Upon their return in

early 1959, it “too had to be rewritten and was converted into a simple report and

submitted to the SSB’s leadership to read and dismiss [参阅了事].”817

815

See for instance: “Zhaokai quanguo tongji baoding xianchang huiyi de baogao 召开全国统计工作保定

现場會議的報告 (Report on Convening an on-the-spot National Statistical Work Meeting at Baoding)” in

Vol. 3 of Tongji gongzuo zhongyao gongzuo huibian 统计工作重要文件汇编. Beijing: Statistical Press,

1959.

816

Gong Jianyao 1994: 10-11. During my interview with him, Gong recalled how bad an effect the

Baoding meeting had on statistical work. More on the Baoding meeting in the Epilogue.

817

Gong Jianyao 1994: 11. Both Gong Jianyao and Wu Hui would play major roles in subsequent years in

statistical work and were principal actors in the post 1978 reform of statistics as a discipline and profession.

334

Things Fall Apart

Just as the reengagement had been facilitated by domestic and international factors in

1956, in 1959 again, a combination of domestic and international factors drove the two

nations and statistical exchange apart. The previous section has already alluded to the

changes within China that had a deleterious impact on statistical work. On the

international stage, events were to overtake the Sino-Indian statistical exchanges as well.

Disagreements over the Sino-Indian border, which had existed since the start of the

decade began to dominate diplomatic exchanges as each side hardened its position. The

ensuing frosty relations no doubt served to reduce some of the spirit of Bandung and

endanger the Panchshila principles.

It is unclear to what extent Mahalanobis and the ISI had cottoned on to these

differences or to the major upheavals within the People’s Republic during 1958. In

October of that year, he lobbied the Chinese to send a couple of planners with expertise

in heavy industries to help with the drafting of India’s third Five Year Plan.818

He

lamented that the half-hearted development of heavy industries in India during the years

of the second Five Year Plan had been a big mistake and wanted to take advantage of

China’s direct experience 直接的经验 in this area. The Chinese Embassy in New Delhi

duly forwarded Mahalanobis’ request to the Foreign Ministry in Beijing and sought

further instructions. The Foreign Ministry, in turn, asked the Planning Commission for

advice on the matter. In doing so, they also added that were Chinese experts to be sent,

their primary goal would be to “expand our country’s influence.”819

After additional

818

WJB 105-00647-02: 1.

819

WJB 105-00647-02: 4.

335

deliberation involving the Foreign Ministry and the Planning Commission it was

eventually agreed to send a three-man team. A telegram sent to the Chinese Embassy in

New Delhi on 26 February 1959 listed the members of this team: the Deputy Director of

the Planning Commission’s Long term Comprehensive Planning Bureau, Chen Xian;

Deputy Director for the Comprehensive Department of the Capital Construction Planning

Bureau, Wang Yilin; and the recently returned Wu Hui, who would serve as the team’s

interpreter. The telegram made clear that these experts would only serve as consultants

who would introduce the People’s Republic’s recent general experience in heavy

industries. Under no circumstances would they advise the Indians on their problems. The

Chinese Embassy in New Delhi wrote back a few days later on March 6, stating that

Mahalanobis welcomed the Chinese experts and hoped they could visit from April to

June. Pitambar Pant and M.M. Mukherji, both of whom had been part of the 1956

Planning Commission delegation, and were now involved in comprehensive planning,

would receive them and arrange their activities.820

The archival trail turns cold after this. On 10 March an uprising occurred in Lhasa

and by the end of the month the Dalai Lama and several tens of thousands of his

followers had escaped to India. They were granted asylum and allowed to settle in the

northern hill resort of Dharamshala. At a scientific conference held in Moscow in May, a

little over a month after the Dalai Lama’s flight from Lhasa, Mahalanobis bumped into

the Chinese physicist Zhou Peiyuan 周培源 and the two engaged in a long

conversation.821

Zhou later filed a report of this meeting with the Foreign Ministry.822

820

WJB 105-00647-02: 5-9.

821

Zhou and Mahalanobis were part of a delegation of the Association of International Scientists 世界科学

工作者协会代表团 that had written to Khruschev requesting a cessation of nuclear testing. See: “赫鲁晓

336

Eight of the report’s nine pages were devoted to a discussion of Tibet and geopolitics.

Only on the last page did Zhou dwell on a few scientific points that had also come up. As

for the three-member Chinese team, it never visited India.

夫复函世界科学工作者协会代表团 苏联愿立即签订停止核试验协定 各国人民正殷切期望国际局

势有所缓和 美国一些人物却大叫大嚷要恢复核试验.” Renmin ribao 13 August 1959, p. 4.

822

WJB 105-00656-02.

337

CHAPTER IX

Epilogue: A ‘Great Leap’ in Statistics

338

1958 marked a watershed in the history of the early PRC. The execution of the first five-

year plan had been a success, meeting and in many cases exceeding the targets that had

been set. And yet, instead of a second five-year plan that built upon the first one, China

was launched down the path of the Great Leap Forward (GLF) 大跃进. At its most basic

level, the GLF was a radically different approach to economic and social organization. It

retained plan-like characteristics of setting specific production and agricultural targets,

but did so by implementing a far-reaching reorganization of labor and production

technologies. In the agricultural sector, farming was collectivized and the people’s

communes 人民公社 so created held several thousands of households that ate in

collective kitchens and labored in nationalized fields and back-yard blast furnaces.

Similar labor-intensive practices were also introduced in the industrial sector as China

sought to overtake England’s steel production within fifteen years.823

Much of the impetus behind the GLF came from Mao’s disavowal of the Soviet

Union and her ‘advanced experience.’ At the Chengdu Conference in March 1958, “Mao

applied the label of ‘dogmatism’ to previous Chinese policies towards heavy industry,

planning, banking, and statistics, explaining that because China lacked native experience

and competence in these areas, she had rigidly copied Soviet practices regardless of their

823

There is a large literature on the Great Leap Forward. For succinct summaries, see: Riskin 1987,

Meisner 1999. On the effect it had in the countryside, see: Kimberly Ens Manning and Felix Wemheur, eds.

Eating Bitterness—New Perspectives on China’s Great Leap Forward and Famine. Vancouver: University

of British Columbia Press, 2011. There is a large body of ever-expanding scholarship on the famine that

ensued in the wake of the GLF. For a trenchant review of some of the more recent works, see: Anthony

Garnaut 2013. “Hard Facts and Half-Truths: The New Archival History of China’s Great Famine. China

Information 27, no. 2 (2013): 223-246.

339

appropriateness to Chinese conditions.”824

Like almost everything else, statistics too did

not escape the consequences of a rejection of Soviet practices.

Between 26 June and 8 July the State Statistics Bureau convened a national ‘on-

the-spot conference 现场会议 in the northern city of Baoding 保定 to promote its vision

of a great leap in statistics. Consisting of regular meetings as well as extended site-visits,

the Baoding conference had two explicit aims: one, to criticize statistical practice of the

past few years, especially given the new dictum of ‘politics in command’ 政治挂帅; and

two, to promote statistical work done in the province of Hebei 河北 as the exemplar of a

new approach to statistics.825

After two days of meetings on 26 and 27 June, the delegates

visited an exhibition of statistical work 统计工作展览, which had been jointly curated by

the SSB and several provincial and municipal statistical bureaus, including Beijing,

824

Riskin 1987: 114. For more on Mao’s critique of the Soviet Union and Soviet experience, see: Mao

Zedong 毛泽东. A Critique of Soviet Economics by Mao Tsetung (translated by Moss Roberts and

annotated by Richard Levy, with an introduction by James Peck). London: Monthly Review Press, 1977.

James Peck’s introduction, in particular, examines the evolution of Mao’s views, which eventually came to

consider Soviet experience “utterly inadequate as a positive model for China’s drive to build socialism.”

See Mao 1977: 24.

825

For summaries of the meeting, see:

(1) State Statistics Bureau. “Ganqing, chongtian—quanguo shengshi tongji gongzuo baoding

xianchang huiyi shengli bimu 干劲冲天、信心百倍—全国省市统计工作保定现场会议胜利闭

幕 (Energetic and Brimming with Confidence—The National Provincial and City Level On-the-

Spot Meeting in Baoding Comes to a Successful Conclusion).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作 1958.14:

25;

(2) “结合现实斗争搞统计—统计工作者决心依靠群众三个月改变工作面貌.” Renmin ribao 1

August 1958, p. 6.; and

(3) DSJ: 59-60.

The DSJ notes that discussions on organizing a meeting in Baoding were initiated in the Spring of 1958,

and on May 4 the State Planning Commission gave the SSB the go-ahead on holding the meeting. The

Beijing statistics bureau had already sent delegations to study statistical work in Hubei in April of 1958.

For more, see: BMA 133-001-00120.

340

Shanghai, Shanxi, and Sichuan.826

After that, approximately twenty delegations were

organized and dispatched across Hebei to various factories, construction sites, schools,

streets and districts, townships, communes, and [work] teams to carry out week-long site

visits. In all, nearly one-hundred grass-roots statistical units were visited. The conference

was reconvened in Baoding on 6 July and the following three days witnessed statements

by twenty-four delegates, representing a range of provinces, districts 区, and

municipalities.827

In their speeches, various delegates promised to not only catch-up with

Hebei’s reforms but to also completely reform statistical work within three months, and

thereby be able to report such good news as a gift to the nation at the upcoming National

Day on 1 October.828

The delegates brought the meeting to a close on 8 July by sending a

telegram to Mao Zedong in which they publicly guaranteed to meet that three month

goal.829

The Baoding Conference was also followed by two additional conferences in

Beijing in 1958 and 1959. Restricted to provincial, municipal, and regional bureau chiefs,

826

See: “Yige fengfu duocai de ‘tongji gongzuo zhanlanguan 一个丰富多彩的 ‘统计工作展览’ (A Richly

Colored Exhibition of Statistical Work).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作 1958.14: 28-29. The exhibition

contained approximately 1,000 items displayed in over ninety rooms spread across three floors.

827

The statements delivered by representatives from Shanxi, Henan, Shaanxi, Guizhou, and Heilongjiang

were republished as individual articles in the Tongji gongzuo’s 14th

issue in 1958. An additional twenty-one

statements from representatives were summarized and reproduced in the order they were delivered in an

article in the same issue: Hunan, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Beijing, Guangxi, Shanghai, Hubei,

Liaoning, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Fujian, Xinjiang, Tianjin, Qinghai, Shangdong,

Yunnan, and Hebei. See: “Ge sheng qu shi tongji gongzuo yuejin zhishi 各省区市统计工作跃进指示

(Instructions for a Great Leap Forward in Statistical Work at the Province, Regional, and Municipal Level).”

Tongji gongzuo 统计工作 1958.14: 26-28.

828

“学河北, 赶河北, 国庆节报捷、献礼.” See: State Statistics Bureau (“Ganqing, chongtian—quanguo

shengshi tongji gongzuo baoding xianchang huiyi shengli bimu”), 1958.14: 25.

829

“Xiang mao zhuxi baozheng—kuzhan sange yue, shixian quanguo tongji gongzuo de da gaige, da yeujin!

向毛主席保证—苦战三个月，实现全国统计工作的大改革，大跃进! (A Guarantee to Chairman

Mao—Three Months of Hard Work to Achieve Reforms in National Statistical Work, [an d bring about] A

Great Leap Forward!).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作 1958.14: 1.

341

these conferences sought to discuss the progress made and problems encountered during

the post-Baoding rectification 更正 of statistics. The first of these meetings took place

four months after the Baoding meeting, and lasted from 25 October to 3 November.

Summary materials produced in its wake, and meant for internal circulation, reiterated

that the Baoding Conference had created a new situation 新的局面 in statistical work.830

By the time of the next meeting, which took place from 11 to 21 April 1959, the SSB had

a new director in Jia Qiyun 贾启允.831

The Deputy Director of the SPC, Jia Tuofu 贾拓

夫 also participated in the meeting.832

In his speech at the Baoding Conference, Xue Muqiao had rhetorically asked:

“What is a Great Leap Forward in Statistics?”833

For Xue, a great leap in statistics was

marked by two key characteristics.834

The first, in line with Mao’s general critique, was

based upon a rejection of dogmatism. Statistics was not an end unto itself but rather a tool

工具 in service to promoting political and productive struggles 为政治斗争、为生产斗

争服务. And so, in a dramatic turnaround, Xue rejected the primacy of the very

principles that he and the SSB had been espousing over the past several years. Xue now

explained that a Great Leap Forward in statistics could not be achieved merely by

830

See: BMA 133-001-00105: 1-10. In his speech at the meeting, Xue Muqiao would claim that Hebei’s

statistical reforms heralded the start of a new era in the history of Chinese statistics 开辟一个新的时期.

See: Xue Muqiao. “Kuzhan sange yue, gaibian quanguo tongji gongzuo mianlin—shixian quanguo tongji

gongzuo dayuejin! 苦战三月, 改变全国统计工作面貌—实现全国统计工作大跃进! (Three Months of

Hard Work, Change the Face of Statistical Work—Realize a Great Leap Forward in National Statistical

Work!).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作 1958.14: 2-7.

831

At this point, it is not clear why Xue Muqiao was removed from his post. For more on Jia Qiyun, see:

DSJ: 6, 472.

832

BMA 133-001-00121: 1-8.

833

Xue Muqiao 1958: 3.

834

Xue Muqiao 1958: 3-5.

342

ensuring the correctness, timeliness, and completeness of periodical reports. And yet, he

warned that there were many who continued to hold on to such antiquated beliefs. What

they practiced was nothing but ‘statistics for statistics sake’ 为统计而统计. Another

common mistake was to regard vigor and dynamism 轰轰烈烈 in statistical work as a

Great Leap Forward in statistics. Unless one also reflected on how one’s statistical work

contributed to a high tide 高潮 in production, such vigor was of little use. Xue proceeded

to equate both these types of errors, observing that statistical workers of the ‘vigor and

dynamism’ brand often ridiculed their ‘statistics for statistics’ comrades. In truth, there

was no difference between the two groups; much like Mencius’ allegory about the

soldiers who had retreated fifty steps mocking those who had retreated one hundred steps,

both groups were guilty of misunderstanding the true nature of a great leap in statistics.

The second characteristic of a great leap in statistics was the mobilization of the

masses to actively participate in statistical work. In this way, Xue explained, the theory of

the mass line could be implemented in statistics: “Statistics was much like other kinds of

work: it cannot rely solely on dedicated organizations or dedicated personnel, nor can it

rely on a vertically integrated leadership structure.” Instead, each level of administration

was required to participate in statistical work, and even more significantly, the masses

themselves could not remain indifferent 漠不关心 to statistical work.835

The idea of mass

participation in statistical work was subsequently promoted through the phrase “the entire

party and all the people [must] attend to statistics” 全党全民办统计.836

835

“统计工作也象其他工作一样，不能单纯依靠专职的机构和专职的干部来办，也不能单纯的依靠

垂直领导思想...群众更对统计工作漠不关心.” See: Xue Muqiao 1958: 4.

836

See, for instance, the editorial in The People’s Daily: “全党全民办统计.” Renmin ribao, 13 August

1958, p. 3.

343

Within a short period of time after the Baoding Conference, publications and

reports that sought to distill and spread the message of the Conference or claim a leap in

the effectiveness of statistical work began to make an appearance. In August 1958, the

Hebei Statistical Press published The Experience of a Great Leap in Statistics.837

That

volume was followed by The High Tide of Statistical Work in Baoding City.838

Early the

following year, the Fujian Planning Committee published a volume on how to carry out

statistical surveys, explaining that the establishment of People’s Communes 人民公社

required new procedures for statistical work.839

Internal reports began to offer

descriptions of what these changes looked like. A summary of the first post-Baoding

meeting in Beijing produced by the SSB in November 1959 noted:

Since the Baoding Conference, statistical work has emerged on a new

scale. Now, statistical authorities at all levels, from the central to the local,

can within a few hours, or within a few tens-of-hours, master statistical

data on all aspects of industrial and agricultural production and

construction at the national, provincial and regional levels. [And] within

three or five days, they can conduct one-time comprehensive surveys, and

basically fulfill in very quick time the party leadership’s various data

requirements.840

The SSB had strived long years to achieve the goal of meeting the party leadership’s

requirements, but here, the Great Leap Forward had helped realize that goal in mere

months. Or so it was claimed.

837

Hebei Statistics Bureau. Tongji gongzuo yuejin jingyan 统计工作跃进经验 (The Experience of a Leap

Forward in Statistical Work). Hebei People’s Press 河北人民出版社, 1958.

838

Hebei Statistics Bureau . Baodingshi tongji gongzuo de gaochao 保定市统计工作的高潮 (The High

Tide of Statistical Work in Baoding). Beijing: State Statistical Press, 1958.

839

Fujian Planning Committee 福建计划委员会. Zenyang kaizhan tongji diaocha yanjiu gongzuo 怎样开

展统计调查研究工作 (How to Commence Statistical Survey Research). Fujian People’s Press 福建人民出

版社, 1959.

840

BMA 133-001-00105: 2.

344

Regardless of whether such claims were true or not, and they were most certainly

‘true’ only if a host of issues including accuracy and representativeness were kept in

abeyance, the very ability to make them pointed to a fundamental shift in the terrain of

statistical work. The down-grading of the periodical report system and the promotion of

mass participation in statistics effectively bypassed the tussle between socialist statistics

and its non-socialist alternatives in favor of a return to Maoist mass science, expressed

via the promotion of the Maoist method of social investigation. Discussed in Part I

Chapter I, this form of typical sampling had been largely ignored by the SSB through

much of the 1950s. After the Baoding Conference, it was elevated to the status of

orthodox method. 841

A March 1960 article explained that:

Typical surveys are an innovative survey method utilized in our nation

under particular historical and social conditions; it is the concrete

manifestation in statistical survey methodology of Chairman Mao’s

synthesis of Marxist-Leninist theory with the practice of revolution in

China.842

The authors of the article went on to list the various qualities of typical sampling. They

claimed it could solve those problems that exhaustive enumeration could not and it could

also help address problems where it was not necessary to carry out exhaustive

enumeration. In addition, typical sampling also served to supplement the results of

exhaustive enumeration. It was flexible and lightweight 灵活轻便; it helped save on

manpower and reduced problems 省人省事, thereby doing more with less 事半功倍.

841

Consider, for instance, the occurrence of “typical sampling” 典型调查 in the title of articles in Tongji

gongzuo during the 1950s: seven articles for the five-year period from 1953 to 1957, two articles in 1958,

and nine in 1959 alone.

842

Feng Guoxi 冯国熙, et al. “Mao zhuxi lun dianxing diaocha 毛主席论典型调查 (Chairman Mao’s

Discussion on Typical Surveys).” Caijing kexue 财经科学 1960.3: 76-81. The quoted section is reproduced

from Garnaut 2013: 239.

345

Using it, new things could be discovered or developed in a timely fashion. It was thus

like a dagger 短剑, which dissected problems in the national economy and across society,

and offered specific analyses of complex social phenomena. In so doing, it also promoted

continuous improvements in the style and methods of leadership. Finally, such typical

sampling was an important way of cultivating 培养 red and expert 红又专 cadre, and

thus avoided problems in [earlier] statistical work, which was divorced not just from

reality but also from the masses 脱离实际、脱离群众.843

Rebadged as Mao’s synthesis, such typical surveys quickly became the dominant

method for collecting information.844

As Yang Bo explained in the first of a series of

articles titled “How to Carry Out Typical Sampling,” which were published in the first

five issues of Statistical Work in 1959:

In recent times, there has emerged an extremely valuable new

phenomenon among statistical leaders at all levels: [they] often dispatch

large numbers of cadres deep into the countryside, factories, mines, shops,

basic construction sites, and other grass-roots units to conduct highly

specified, on-the-ground research work and thereby grasp the new

circumstances and problems of the development of the national

economy…[such activity] is the distinctive marker of changes in the style

of statistics leadership and in work methods. 845

This state of affairs continued unabated until 1961. In June of that year, Wang Sihua 王

思华 was appointed the SSB’s third director and under him attempts were made to re-

establish statistical work along the lines of the pre-GLF years. Even so, the influence of

843

Feng et al., 1960: 79.

844

See: Yang Bo 杨波. “Zenyang zuo dianxing diaocha 怎样做典型调查 (How to Carry out Typical

Surveys).” Tongji gongzuo 统计工作 1959.01: 36-37. For a brief discussion of this methodology in the

context of the reliability of famine related data, see Garnaut 2013: 238-240. For a discussion of the

importance of non-exhaustive forms of surveying 非全面调查, see Feng et al. 1960: 76-77.

845

Yang Bo 1959: 37.

346

mass science, with its emphasis on anti-expertise and anti-professionalization, persisted

within the practice of socialist statistics through the rest of that decade and the decade of

the 1970s. It is this notion that has come to inform our understanding of statistics during

the Mao era.846

But as this dissertation has shown, the picture till 1958 was quite different,

far more contested, and open to very different paths.

It was not until 1979 that a debate about socialist statistics was re-kindled. That

year, statistician and Renmin University professor Dai Shiguang 戴世光 published an

article in the journal Economic Research in which he set about demolishing what he

called the theoretical cloak 外衣 of Soviet socialist statistics. The article was republished

in the journal Statistics 统计, the descendant of Statistical Work 统计工作, and ignited a

major reform movement within the world of Chinese statistics.847

But that is the subject

of another dissertation.

846

See, for instance: Liu 2009.

847

Dai Shiguang 戴世光. “Jiji fazhan kexue de tongjixue—wei woguo zaori shixian sige xiandaihua fuwu

积极发展科学的统计学—为我国早日实现四个现代化服务 (Actively Develop Scientific Statistics—In

Service to the early realization of the four modernization in our country).” Jingji yanjiu 经济研究 1979.02:

63-67. Republished in Tongji 统计 1979.01: 23-27.

347

REFERENCE MATTER

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES

In China:

Beijing Municipal Archives (BMA)

Foreign Ministry Archives of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing (WJB)

Institute of Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing

Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing

National Library of China, Beijing

Peking University Library, Beijing

Resource Room, Department of Statistics, Renmin University

Tsinghua University Archives, Beijing

Tsinghua University Library, Beijing

In India:

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Institute for Economic Growth, New Delhi

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National Library, Kolkata

Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), New Delhi

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(ORAL HISTORY) INTERVIEWS

Debkumar Bose Kolkata, August 14 2009

V.P. Dutt New Delhi, August 30 2009

Gong Jianyao 龚鉴尧 Guangzhou, September 14 2011

348

Lin Fude 林富德 Beijing, 22 April 2011

Meera Kosambi Pune, August 20 2012

Ni Jiaxun 倪加讯 Beijing, March 29 2011 and September 7 2011

Narayan Sen Singapore, July 23 2012

Wu Cangping 邬沧萍 Beijing, March 11 2011)

Wu Hui 吴辉 Beijing, September 8 2011

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Caijing yanjiu《财经研究》

Guangming ribao《光明日报》

Jingji zhoubao 《经济周报》

Renmin ribao《人民日报》

Tongji gongzuo (Northeast Statistics Bureau) 《统计工作》

Tongji gongzuo tongxun (State Statistical Bureau) 《统计工作通讯》

Tongji gongzuo (State Statistical Bureau) 《统计工作》

Xin jianshe《新建设》

Zhongguo gongye 《中国工业》

Ananda Bazaar Patrika

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Indian Statistical Institute—Annual Report(s)

Samvadadhvam

Sankhya

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