ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Up to the Sky: Data Visualization Strategies in Grassroots Mobilization during China’s Great Leap Forward

• In Event: Data Visualization and the History of Statistics 2

English Abstract

This paper examines data visualization practices during China’s Great Leap Forward (1958 - 1960), focusing on the technique of statistical evaluation (tongji pingbi, 统计评比) as a grassroots tool of mobilization.During this phase of extreme production demands in the Mao Era, grassroots production units were mandated to regularly create charts and diagrams to track production progress, rank performance, and “elevate the ethos” of workers. Drawing upon preserved charts, as well as the textbooks and handbooks illustrating visualization principles, this paper examines how these statistical graphics functioned as active instruments of rhetoric, control, and political aesthetic, and how visual conventions shaped workers’ encounters with statistical knowledge which contributed to the political logic of this campaign.

A striking feature of these visualizations is their incorporation of cosmic and space-race imagery - rockets, satellites, and upward-thrusting trajectories. These elements linked commoner’s labor processes to global technological competition, creating an alternative visual reality in which ordinary workers appeared to participate directly in humanity’s ascent into the “space age.” These charts did not merely depict production but actively reorganized how production was imagined, legitimized, and disciplined. By revealing the mobilization logic and tools within grassroots production in the Great Leap Forward, this paper historicizes data visualization and contributes to a plural understanding of statistics, challenging the notion of visualization as a purely neutral, objective reflection of reality and exploring how visual practices acquire authority and trust in contested sciences.

Author

• Tianyue Zhou, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg