In 1968, the director of USAID coined the term "green revolution" to celebrate the new technological solutions that promised to ease hunger and so forestall the spread of more "red revolutions" around the globe. In China, however, green and red revolutions proceeded side by side. In contrast with the technocratic vision of American agricultural science and foreign policy, the dominant position in socialist China was that science could not be divorced from politics, and modernization could not be separated from revolution. The goal of this book is to bring into view China's unique intersection ... More

In 1968, the director of USAID coined the term "green revolution" to celebrate the new technological solutions that promised to ease hunger and so forestall the spread of more "red revolutions" around the globe. In China, however, green and red revolutions proceeded side by side. In contrast with the technocratic vision of American agricultural science and foreign policy, the dominant position in socialist China was that science could not be divorced from politics, and modernization could not be separated from revolution. The goal of this book is to bring into view China's unique intersection of red and green revolutions through the experiences of scientists, peasants, state agents, and "educated youth." The history of what in China was called "scientific farming" offers a unique opportunity not only to explore the environmental and social consequences of modern agricultural technologies, but also to develop a critique of the fundamental assumptions about science and society that undergirded the green revolution, and ultimately to radically reposition science in social and political terms. The environmental costs of chemical-intensive agriculture and the human costs of emphasizing increasing production over equitable distribution of food have been felt as strongly in China as anywhere on the planet. However, Mao-era challenges to technocracy laid important groundwork for ongoing anti-capitalist, decolonialist, and environmentalist struggles to confront problems of hunger and sustainability in appropriately social and political ways.