Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts: Information, Ideology, and Authoritarianism in China

Description

A unique analysis of the numbers that came to define Chinese politics and how this quantification evolved over time.

For decades, a few numbers came to define Chinese politics-until those numbers did not count what mattered and what they counted did not measure up. Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts argues that the Chinese government adopted a system of limited, quantified vision in order to survive the disasters unleashed by Mao Zedong's ideological leadership. Jeremy Wallace explains how that system worked and analyzes how the problems that accumulated in its blind spots led Xi Jinping to take drastic action. Xi's neopolitical turn—aggressive anti-corruption campaigns, reassertion of party authority, and personalization of power—is an attempt fix the problems of the prior system, as well as a hedge against an inability to do so. The book argues that while of course dictators stay in power through coercion and cooptation, they also do so by convincing their populations and themselves of their right to rule. Quantification is one tool in this persuasive arsenal, but it comes with its own perils.

About the author:

Jeremy L. Wallace is an associate professor of government at Cornell University, on sabbatical leave for 2021-22 at Georgetown's Mortara Center for International Studies. He studies authoritarian politics focusing on China, cities, statistics, and climate change. He recently published work on COVID-19 in APSR and on China's relationship with the international order in International Organization. He serves as an editor at The Monkey Cage and writes the China Lab newsletter.

Reviews

"Professor Wallace offers readers a fascinating volume on how quantification and governance have gone hand in hand in China and their discontents. This is a unique perspective on and reinterpretation of China's political economy in recent decades." -Dali L. Yang, William C. Reavis Professor of Political Science, The University of Chicago "

"In this important book, Jeremy Wallace shows why the center in China has limited its vision to a few quantifiable indicators, such as GDP, investment, and fiscal revenue. This focus has led to a failure to see local problems like protests, debt, and pollution. Wallace's arguments speak to key debates in the study of authoritarian politics." -Martin K. Dimitrov, Professor of Political Science, Tulane University "

Table of contents

Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: A Numbers Game
Chapter 2: Quantifying Like a Regime
Chapter 3: Seeking Truth
Chapter 4: Aftershocks
Chapter 5: Quantified Governance
Chapter 6: Hiding Facts
Chapter 7: A Neopolitical Turn
Chapter 8: Beyond Count
Bibliography
Index