A Review of Arunabh Ghosh’s Making It Count
In the grand narrative of the history of science and technology during the Cold War, Arunabh Ghosh’s Making It Count offers a unique revisionist sample from within the socialist camp. This is not merely a history of data fabrication or political propaganda; rather, it is a conceptual history of how “statistical epistemology” underwent drastic evolution under the pressure of statecraft.
Ghosh’s core concern lies in a fundamental question: In a vast, infrastructure-poor, nascent socialist state, what constitutes “fact”? Through what methodology are numbers constructed to be regarded as “truth” possessed of political legitimacy? Why did a cumbersome statistical system based on the Soviet model give way to Maoist-style “typical sampling” in 1950s China? Through an analysis of the interplay between three statistical modes—”The Exhaustive,” “The Stochastic,” and “The Ethnographic” (or typical sampling)—the author reveals the complex tension among technocrats, political intent, and state capacity.
Academic Status and the State of Dialogue
At the intersection of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and contemporary Chinese history, this book harbors revisionist ambitions. Traditional Cold War narratives often fall into a binary of “democracy/objectivity” versus “totalitarianism/fabrication.” Ghosh, however, refuses to simply dismiss early Chinese statistical work as a machine for manufacturing political lies. Instead, he views it as a serious attempt at modern statecraft, despite its ultimate and tragic failure.
The book’s central theoretical interlocutor is undoubtedly James Scott’s theory of “legibility” proposed in Seeing Like a State. Scott argues that modern states tend to simplify social reality to facilitate management. Ghosh inherits this core concern but significantly enriches and modifies the theory through the Chinese case. He points out that the socialist state did not have only one way of “seeing”; in 1950s China, there existed multiple competing “optic regimes.”
Furthermore, Ghosh places China within the context of the global development of statistics, echoing the work of Ian Hacking and Theodore Porter regarding probability theory and quantitative objectivity. He challenges the “Western-centrism” prevalent in the history of statistics, which assumes a linear evolution from descriptive statistics to inferential statistics based on probability theory. The book cites a highly symbolic detail: the Statistical Conference held in Moscow in 1954. This conference theoretically adopted the resolution that “statistics is a social science,” thereby stripping away mathematical statistics (based on probability theory) because the latter was deemed to study “chance,” whereas the socialist economy was governed by inevitable laws . This theoretical tone profoundly influenced China, causing the Chinese statistical community to establish the epistemological hegemony of “exhaustive enumeration” for a long period, viewing probability theory as a product of capitalist agnosticism.
Pre-1949, Early PRC, and the Great Leap Forward: Manifestations and Differences across Three Stages
Ghosh divides the evolution of Chinese statistical history into three stages with distinct epistemological foundations, each corresponding to a dominant statistical philosophy.
The Denied “Bourgeois” Legacy (Pre-1949 and Early Cleanup)
Before 1949, the Chinese statistical community was deeply influenced by Anglo-American schools. Statisticians like Jin Guobao viewed statistics as a universal science and widely applied mathematical statistics and probability theory. However, this knowledge base quickly lost legitimacy after the founding of the People’s Republic. As Li Fuchun characterized it in a 1951 speech, bourgeois statistics was a tool “serving the exploiting class,” masking the essence of class struggle. This phase was characterized by “purges” and “reconstruction,” stripping the old knowledge base of its discourse power to establish the political correctness of socialist statistics.
The Soviet Model and the Establishment of “The Exhaustive” (1949–1957)
his is the core focus of the book. In this phase, “The Exhaustive” became the mainstream philosophy. Its core hypothesis was that because the socialist economy is planned and governed by laws, there is no need to gamble with “sampling”; rather, objective truth should be mastered by “counting every single unit.” The concrete manifestation of this phase was the establishment of a massive State Statistics Bureau (SSB) system and the implementation of the “Complete Enumeration Periodic Reporting System.” The book notes that this system pursued “extensiveness,” “completeness,” and “objectivity.” Wang Sihua declared in 1952 that the Northeast Statistical Bureau had established a “new type of standardized statistical work”. To achieve this “completeness,” the state attempted to have every factory and agricultural cooperative fill out exhaustive forms. For example, the summary sheet of the 1953 annual industrial enterprise report required extremely detailed data. This pursuit of certainty constructed a seemingly rigorous but extremely fragile knowledge base, as it was built upon the false assumption that the state possessed infinite information-processing capacity (Infinite State Capacity).
The Great Leap Forward and the Return of the “Ethnographic” Method (Post-1958)
When “The Exhaustive” became unsustainable due to exceeding state capacity and was accused of “dogmatism,” the discourse power shifted again. The “On-the-Spot Conference” (Baoding Conference) held in Baoding, Hebei, in June 1958 became a turning point. At this meeting, Xue Muqiao was even compelled to engage in self-criticism; the original “statistics for statistics’ sake” was negated and replaced by “The Ethnographic approach” (Typical Sampling). This method originated from Mao Zedong’s early revolutionary experiences (such as the Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan). It no longer sought representativeness in the statistical sense but emphasized inferring the whole through personal observation and “dissecting sparrows” (selecting typical cases). The book notes that by 1960, this method was explicitly summarized by Feng Guoxi and others as “the concrete manifestation in statistical survey methodology of Chairman Mao’s synthesis of Marxist-Leninist theory with the practice of revolution in China”. This shift marked the complete triumph of “politics in command” over “professional division of labor,” transforming statistics from a bureaucratic technical activity into a mass political movement.
The Performance of Technocrats and Their Roles under Different Political Intents
Ghosh’s portrayal of Chinese statistical technocrats (such as Wang Sihua and Xue Muqiao) reveals a landscape filled with tension and constant adjustment.
Early PRC: Builders of Institutions and Missionaries of the Soviet Model
In this period, the role of technocrats was to build the state’s Infrastructural Power. By introducing Soviet experts (such as A. I. Ezhov), they attempted to incorporate a scattered Chinese society into a standardized digital grid. They played the role of agents of “rationalization,” attempting to use data to provide legitimacy for the planned economy. In his early practice at the Northeast Statistical Bureau, Wang Sihua attempted to build a professional statistical team by translating Soviet textbooks and establishing unified reporting forms, proudly declaring the establishment of “new standardized statistical work” . At this time, their political intent was to consolidate the governance capacity of the new regime through “scientization” and “normalization.”
1956–1957: Explorers Seeking Alternatives
This was a moment of extreme tension. Faced with the deluge of reports and inefficiency caused by the Soviet model, technocrats did not follow blindly but demonstrated surprising openness. The book details the historical interlude of “The Turn to India.” Zhou Enlai personally visited the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), and in December 1956, he told P.C. Mahalanobis: “We want to learn from you… and next year in Peking”. Subsequently, Wang Sihua led a delegation to India. They keenly realized that India’s Large-scale Random Sampling technology was likely the remedy for the difficulties of surveying China’s massive population, as it was “more economical, faster, and more accurate”. This detail is profoundly ironic: technocrats of socialist China attempting to learn mathematical statistical methods—viewed as “bourgeois”—from non-socialist India to save the socialist planned economy. This indicates that before political pressure reached its peak, technocrats attempted to introduce new technical tools (stochastic statistics) to maintain their professional authority and system effectiveness, trying to use “technical rationality” to repair the shortcomings of “state capacity.”
Confrontation and Negotiation: Technocratic Agency, Political Capital, and Resistance
The book demonstrates that technocrats were not a monolithic block; they faced political pressure from above, dealt with passive resistance from below, and attempted to establish their own political capital within the cracks.
“Li Ming’s” Letter: Passive Resistance and Negotiation from Below
The book unearths a fascinating detail: In July 1955, a young statistician named “Li Ming” published an open letter in the Statistical Work Bulletin, questioning the meaning of statistical work, calling it boring “adding and subtracting,” and stating he was “unwilling to do statistical work” . This letter triggered a nationwide discussion, and the State Statistics Bureau even published a booklet titled Ardently Love Our Statistical Work. This was not merely a young man’s complaint but represented the collective burnout and passive resistance of lower-level technocrats against a massive, cumbersome, and detached statistical system. Although officials ultimately guided the discussion toward political education on “loving one’s job,” the letter itself exposed the unsustainability of the “Exhaustive” mode at the micro-level. This was a form of reverse agency demonstrated by technocrats (even those at the bottom) in the face of grand narratives.
The Vulnerability and Performance of Political Capital
Technocrats attempted to establish departmental authority by emphasizing the “professionalism” and “scientific nature” of statistical work. However, this effort suffered a devastating blow during the Great Leap Forward. To preserve their positions, statistical officials were forced to engage in performative self-negation. At the Baoding Conference in 1958, Xue Muqiao, despite being the architect of the “Exhaustive” system, had to conform to the political wind and criticize the dogmatism of “statistics for statistics’ sake”. To elevate the status of statistical work, personnel even attempted to “fetishize” statistical reports; one statistician, Feng Jixi, went so far as to compare completing a statistical table to the excitement of “a peasant catching sight of a golden ear of wheat” or “a steelworker observing molten steel emerging from a Martin furnace”. This indicates that in that specific historical period, the technocrats’ knowledge base alone was insufficient to serve as stable political capital; they had to constantly reshape their discourse to maintain legitimacy.
The Continuity of Accountability Mechanisms: The Contemporary Legacy of Upward Responsibility
Ghosh proposes the concept of “State Incapacity” in the book, which not only explains the history of that era but also constitutes a profound metaphor for the logic of contemporary Chinese governance.
Data Flowing “Upward”
In the statistical system of the 1950s, data flowed in one direction: gathering from the bottom up. Statistical reports were meant to satisfy the needs of superior planning departments (such as the State Planning Commission) and the leadership, rather than serving grassroots management. The book mentions that this mechanism led to an “excess issuance of forms” (bao biao fan lan), where the grassroots were exhausted by repeated demands from different superior departments. For instance, a glass factory in Nanjing was found to be required to fill out 351 types of forms, only 19% of which were actually needed by the statistics bureau, with the rest mostly being redundant demands from various levels of government.
The Roots of Formalism: The Rupture between Capacity and Will
This system of “upward responsibility,” combined with a lack of state capacity, inevitably led to formalism. The book mentions that when facing a deluge of reports, the grassroots adopted an attitude of “discarded as soon as issued” (useless/suifa suifei), or were forced to estimate or even fabricate data. This reveals a trans-historical truth: When the state attempts to extract data exceeding its infrastructural capacity (trained personnel, effective verification mechanisms), it inevitably leads to the proliferation of formalism. The “exaggeration wind” (boastfulness) generated to meet planning targets back then follows the same institutional logic as the “mountain of documents and sea of meetings” generated to meet assessment targets in grassroots governance today: In a system lacking horizontal supervision and independent verification mechanisms, data is no longer a tool reflecting reality but a prop for subordinates to perform loyalty and achievements to superiors. The statistical system ceased to be a “barometer” for discovering problems and became a machine for producing “good news.” As William Deringer notes in Calculated Values, numbers are carefully packaged as weapons to prove one’s own point.
Although Ghosh’s work is extremely valuable in terms of historical excavation and theoretical construction, certain aspects remain open to debate.
A Few Thoughts
Overestimation of the “India Interlude”?
Ghosh devotes significant space (the entire Chapter 7) to describing Sino-Indian statistical exchanges, which is significant for filling academic gaps. However, we must be wary of overestimating the actual historical impact of this exchange. Although Zhou Enlai and Wang Sihua showed intense interest, did this brief contact (1956–1957) truly constitute a key “fork in the road” for Chinese statistical history? Or was it merely a ripple in the grand current of history? In fact, with the deterioration of bilateral relations in 1958 and the shift in domestic political winds, this attempt quickly died. While historically short-lived, the epistemological significance of this interlude is profound. However, strictly from an institutional impact perspective, its actual legacy in the turbulent years that followed remains debatable.
The Overlooked Materiality of Calculation
While Ghosh masterfully deconstructs the epistemological shifts in Chinese statistics, the book is surprisingly quiet on the materiality of information processing. The “Exhaustive” method (counting every single unit) creates a massive burden of data aggregation. In the 1950s, unlike the Soviet Union or the U.S., China lacked the mainframe computing infrastructure to process such “Big Data.” The reliance on the abacus and manual tabulation meant that the “State Incapacity” Ghosh describes was not just organizational or political, but profoundly technological.
The collapse of the “Exhaustive” mode was not only because of the “deluge of forms” at the grassroots level, but also because the central node lacked the physical computational power to digest this information. By focusing heavily on the politics of numbers, the book somewhat overlooks the mechanics of calculation. For a study on “making it count,” the question of how they actually counted—the physical bottleneck of data processing—deserves more granular scrutiny. This omission is particularly notable given that the “Exhaustive” ideal is essentially a pre-digital anticipation of a digital-era capability.
In summary, Making It Count penetrates the deep logic of Chinese socialist state governance through a thick description of the technical details of statistics. It tells us that numbers are never neutral; every count is an exercise of power, and every choice of method—whether exhaustive, stochastic, or ethnographic—presages a specific political destiny.