Governing through numbers: Accounting practices in China's People's Commune, 1958–1980s

While the role of accounting as a calculative practice in political governance has been widely examined in the accounting literature, its application within socialist contexts remains relatively underexplored. This study investigates the accounting practices employed in the People's Commune during Maoist China, illustrating how accounting calculations, through mechanisms such as planning, monetisation, and the work-point system, were instrumental in facilitating state-led political governance. By translating a fragmented agricultural economy into standardised quantitative measures, accounting enabled mass-scale governance and reinforced the political authority of the state. This study also contributes to the field of agricultural accounting by providing empirical insights into the implementation of calculative practices within a collectivised socialist framework.