In Praise of the Maoist Economic Planning: Living Standards and Economic Development in Sichuan since 1931 (Studies on Contemporary China) Review

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In Praise of the Maoist Economic Planning: Living Standards and Economic Development in Sichuan since 1931 (Studies on Contemporary China) ReviewThis detailed economic history of modern Sichuan Province by economist Chris Bramall is a balanced, illuminating lesson about the pros and cons of industrial planning and egalitarian oriented interventions as a development strategy for deeply impoverished areas.
The title requires explanation to avoid misunderstanding, in that it sounds like a radical leftist cheerleading tract, but actually is far from it. Presumably the title was chosen as an attention grabber, highlighting the counter-conventional wisdom conclusion the empirical research supports.
Why counter-conventional wisdom? If someone argued Shanghai/Jiangsu did ok on the Mao era, few would object strenuously, but Sichuan? Sichuan was devastated far worse than any other province by the Great Leap Forward famine of 1959-61, which Bramall spends an entire chapter analyzing. (Among estimates, Bramall argues that the higher famine death numbers are the most plausible). Later, at the end of the Mao era in 1976-77, Sichuan was again facing a severe food crisis (though not massive deaths this time). These two episodes would hardly make anyone suspect that economic development happened between these two dreadful endposts, but in fact it did, quite rapidly, both in traditional measures and Amartya Sen's alternative "capabilities" view, which Bramall is sympathetic to and employs extensively. Unlike 1970s nonsense written about China, this is not due to uncritical use of official PRC stats. Intepretations can be debated, but his empirical work is solid.
The title aside, this book is not only about the Maoist period. It discusses Sichaun's experience under the ROC, and discusses how the post-famine development phase served as a good foundation for the rapid growth in the first phase of the reform period. (A theme continued in more detail in his follow-up book _Sources of Chinese Economic Growth 1978-1996_)
Bramall points out that the post-famine growth-with-equity phase was even more impressive given the amount of resources that had to be diverted because of external military threats. The "third front" was the duplication of industry in the interior in expectation of American invasion of the Chinese mainland during Vietnam. It is now known that Mao was planning to send the PLA to North Vietnam if the Americans bombed the area of NV near the Chinese border. He felt that the Americans would retalitate by invading China itself, and the extensive third front economic strategy was preparation for this eventuality.
This is purely an economic study. For a more social-political view of rural Sichuan, there are two village studies in English: Stephen Endicott's "Red Earth: Revolution in a Sichuan Village" and Gregory Ruf's "Cadres and Kin: Making a Socialist Village in West China, 1921-1991". Both would make a good companion to Bramall's technical study.
David Goodman's "China's Provincial Leaders, 1949-1985" also contains rich information about the province level politics of Sichuan.
Bramall also wrote a related journal article showing that there was no connection between the date of decollectivization (which varied from 1977-1983 in Sichuan) and rate of agricultural growth; "Origins of the Agricultural 'Miracle': Some Evidence from Sichuan" by Chris Bramall. China Quarterly Sept 1995.
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