This is an important book. It is well researched, concisely written, and intellectually ambitious. The book makes two major contributions: first, it demonstrates the importance of social surveys—or the production of social facts—in the enterprise of nation-state building in modern China; and second, it offers a careful analysis of the mutual constitution of knowledge and epistemology on the one hand and state and society on the other.

The book thus joins a growing literature on science as knowledge and practice in modern China that makes use of the scholarship in the history of science, postcolonial studies, and nationalism studies. The recent appearance of an array of books and dissertations on anthropology, archaeology, geography, and geology reflects this trend. The subject of Lam's book is what he calls the social survey movement, the attempts by a variety of historical actors to produce empirical facts about state, society, and nation in twentieth-century China. Lam does an admirable job in integrating theoretical insights and historical reconstruction. The result is a fresh look at the transition from the late Qing through Republican China with regard to major historical questions such as nation-state, governance, and modernity.

The book consists of six chapters on a range of topics. It is best to describe them in order. The first chapter maps out the historical context of the social survey movement and the historiographical concerns of the book. The next chapter begins with an informed discussion of the goals and practices of Ming and Qing surveys, which are then contrasted with those of the first modern census implemented during the “New Policies” reform. Lam argues that the radical change between the two modes of surveys was due primarily to the differences in governmental rationality rather than to the alleged shift from a “blind” premodern state to a “seeing” modern state. The first modern national census, however, caused fear and anger among certain quarters of the populace. Ever mindful of different historical actors, Lam turns his attention to the phenomenon of resistance from below. Chapter 3, therefore, examines instances of popular riots against census taking. Lam cuts through the language of the elite, which dismissed the rioters as backward and superstitious, and listens sympathetically to the voices and concerns of the protests. The next chapter concentrates mainly on the establishment of national scientific institutes, particularly the Academia Sinica, and their mission in producing facts about and for the nation-state. Using the example of fieldwork, Lam also discusses how sentiment, such as enduring suffering for self-cultivation and national salvation, played a role in the making of credible facts. Chapter 5 looks at the question of space and time along the lines of Benedict Anderson's notion of imagined communities. It examines the 1928 national census, which required the nation to freeze in time, so to speak, for the sake of census taking. The enterprise proved to be little more than a bold claim, but it suggested a notable instance of national imagining of time and space. There were, however, contradictions in this homogenization of national time-space. The surveys of ethnic minorities, for example, ultimately maintained a temporal hierarchy of civilization and denied their coevalness with the Han Chinese. Chapter 6 presents China as a social laboratory for competing social surveys, visions of state and society, and approaches to social engineering. It first explains how American social scientists and American foundations used social surveys to produce empirical data and models for modernizing projects in China and beyond. It goes on to discuss how Chinese intellectuals indigenized American social science, devised their own approaches, and pursued their own social and political agendas. The main example of this chapter is the rural reconstruction movement in the 1930s.

Lam rightly adopts a broad definition of social survey, encompassing a wide range of activities, from census to philology, from archaeology to sociological research. At times, this comprehensiveness seems to have come at a cost of coherence. The book appears to be a little episodic, moving from one thing to another over the chapters. The reader will yearn to know more about some topics or missing links. Since the first national census of the late Qing was so important, it would be helpful to learn who introduced or devised it based on what available models or information. What about social and economic statistics? Weren't they social surveys? The stories about National Studies (guoxue) and the Institute of History and Philology are interesting, but some of them are well known. This reader would have preferred to see instead more on the numerous social surveys of urban, rural, educational, economic, and family conditions in the 1920s and 1930s. Wouldn't it be intriguing to compare the simultaneity and national imagining of the 1928 national census and that of the voluntary mass observation project of “One Day in China” in 1936?

None of these quibbles should detract from the originality and richness of Lam's book. It is a splendid achievement. I read the book with an Elmore Leonard book on my desk, and I wasn't once tempted to pick it up. That says something. Lam's excellent book deserves to be widely read.