Sigrid Schmalzer

A young boy is inspired to become a scientist when Pu Zhelong comes to his village and teaches the farmers there how to use natural methods to protect their crops.

Remembering Chinese Scientist Pu Zhelong's Work for Sustainable Farming

Moth and Wasp, Soil and Ocean

Agricultural science and the socialist state -- Pu Zhelong: making socialist science work -- Yuan Longping: "intellectual peasant"--Peasants: "experience" and "backwardness"--Seeing like a state agent -- The Lei Feng paradox -- Opportunity and failure

Scientific Farming in Socialist China

Red Revolution, Green Revolution

In the 1920s an international team of scientists and miners unearthed the richest evidence of human evolution the world had ever seen: Peking Man. After the communist revolution of 1949, Peking Man became a prominent figure in the movement to bring science to the people. In a new state with twin goals of crushing “superstition” and establishing a socialist society, the story of human evolution was the first lesson in Marxist philosophy offered to the masses. At the same time, even Mao’s populist commitment to mass participation in science failed to account for the power of popular culture—represented most strikingly in legends about the Bigfoot-like Wild Man—to reshape ideas about human nature. The People’s Peking Man is a skilled social history of twentieth-century Chinese paleoanthropology and a compelling cultural—and at times comparative—history of assumptions and debates about what it means to be human. By focusing on issues that push against the boundaries of science and politics, The People’s Peking Man offers an innovative approach to modern Chinese history and the history of science.

Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China

The People's Peking Man

In 1968, the director of USAID coined the term “green revolution” to celebrate the new technological solutions that promised to ease hunger around the world—and forestall the spread of more “red,” or socialist, revolutions. Yet in China, where modernization and scientific progress could not be divorced from politics, green and red revolutions proceeded side by side. In Red Revolution, Green Revolution, Sigrid Schmalzer explores the intersection of politics and agriculture in socialist China through the diverse experiences of scientists, peasants, state agents, and “educated youth.” The environmental costs of chemical-intensive agriculture and the human costs of emphasizing increasing production over equitable distribution of food and labor have been felt as strongly in China as anywhere—and yet, as Schmalzer shows, Mao-era challenges to technocracy laid important groundwork for today’s sustainability and food justice movements. This history of “scientific farming” in China offers us a unique opportunity not only to explore the consequences of modern agricultural technologies but also to engage in a necessary rethinking of fundamental assumptions about science and society.

Joshua Goldstein

Matthew D. Johnson

James A. Cook

Visualizing Modern China: Image, History, and Memory, 1750–Present offers a sophisticated yet accessible interpretation of modern Chinese history through visual imagery. With rich illustrations and a companion website, it is an ideal textbook for college-level courses on modern Chinese history and on modern visual culture. The introduction provides a methodological framework and historical overview, while the chronologically arranged chapters use engaging case studies to explore important themes. Topics include: Qing court ritual, rebellion and war, urban/rural relations, art and architecture, sports, the Chinese diaspora, state politics, film propaganda and censorship, youth in the Cultural Revolution, environmentalism, and Internet culture. http://visualizingmodernchina.org

Sigrid Schmalzer

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