Other important examples over the years include family planning statistics, coal mine accident rates, air quality readings, and COVID case numbers. The book began as a project on the manipulation of data in China: who manipulates which statistics, and when and why they do so. Wallace explains that the consequences of statistical manipulation are nuanced, and not necessarily all bad. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
mandag 2. januar 2023
INTERVIEW: JEREMY WALLACE ON THE CHINESE STATE’S “LIMITED, QUANTIFIED VISION”
Jeremy Wallace, associate professor of Government at Cornell University, joined CDT to discuss his new book, Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts: Information, Ideology, and Authoritarianism in China. In a wide-ranging conversation, Wallace traced the rise and fall of what he terms the Chinese state’s “limited, quantified vision.” Wallace explains how the state’s desire to increase productive forces after the death of Mao evolved into an obsession with a small subset of numbers, chief among them Gross Domestic Product (GDP), that came to dominate Chinese politics—until, suddenly, they didn’t (although rumors of their demise may be premature.)
Other important examples over the years include family planning statistics, coal mine accident rates, air quality readings, and COVID case numbers. The book began as a project on the manipulation of data in China: who manipulates which statistics, and when and why they do so. Wallace explains that the consequences of statistical manipulation are nuanced, and not necessarily all bad. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Other important examples over the years include family planning statistics, coal mine accident rates, air quality readings, and COVID case numbers. The book began as a project on the manipulation of data in China: who manipulates which statistics, and when and why they do so. Wallace explains that the consequences of statistical manipulation are nuanced, and not necessarily all bad. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
