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Corporate Conquests: Business, the State, and the Origins of Ethnic Inequality in Southwest China. By C. Patterson Giersch. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2020. 304 pp. ISBN: 9781503612167 (paper)

numbers. As Ghosh writes, “The state was unable to see and measure society as anything other than a response to its own policies” (p. 285). Making It Countmakes a well-documented and sophisticated contribution to several intersecting fields. Linking intellectual history and science and technology studies, it shows how theoretical, institutional, and even diplomatic aspects were closely intertwined in defining a discipline like statistics, picking up where Tong Lam’s study of the social survey movement and the state-building projects of the 1930s ends.1 As part of a set of new studies of the early Mao era, Making It Count complicates our understanding of the political battles around science and statecraft, although perhaps it does not fundamentally change the notion that ideology was at the core of knowledge production in the PRC. However, it does interestingly point out that Marxist teleology was not always synonymous with scientistic approaches. Perhaps some further thought might also be devoted to the construction of the social categories used in statistical work, and their links with ideology and politics. In passing, Ghosh raises the provocative question whether the “exhaustive tradition” in statistics is currently undergoing a revival with the advent of big data. Finally, by documenting a previously unknown chapter in the history of India-China relations, it complexifies our understanding of the early Cold War while also connecting with a new field of research.2 Making It Count is elegantly written and jargon-free (apart from a few mathematical formulas), making it suitable for undergraduates as well as graduate students. Engaging with at least three important fields in contemporary history, Ghosh’s book is sure to meet with wide interest among historians of China, Asia, as well as intellectual historians and historians of science.