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

• Author: Pieragastini, Steven

Eisenman, Joshua. Red China's Green Revolution: Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development Under the Commune. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.

Informative and thought-provoking, Joshua Eisenman's Red Chinas Green Revolution pairs well with Sigrid Schmalzer's Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China (2016) and other recent research as part of an ongoing shift in perceptions about the 1970s in China. The main argument of Red China's Green Revolution is that the commune system built up in the Maoist era (1949-1976) was more productive than has been recognized by previous scholars. Therefore, the unwinding of the communes and the creation of the Household Responsibility System (HRS, between 1978 and 1983) was not primarily about improving productivity (its ostensible aim), nor was it due to grassroots pressure from farmers dissatisfied with the commune system (per the Party line), as much as it was about discrediting the rump Maoist wing of the Party and consolidating the power of Deng Xiaoping and his reformminded proteges. In sum, following the disasters of the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), reforms were adopted in the commune system (including allowing...