BARKER, Randolph.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Personal Notes on China Trip, October 7-27, 1976. A rare account of an academic research trip to China only one month after Mao's death, marked "Draft: Not for Quotation" and with the 1977 ownership signature of the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Theodore Schultz. We have traced only one other copy, held by Randolph Barker's home institution, Cornell.Barker (d. 2022) joined the faculty at Cornell in the 1960s and devoted his career to rice economics. In 1976, he was invited, along with six other academics from the International Rice Research Institute, to visit the People's Republic of China. The team arrived on 8 October, one a day after the dramatic arrest of Mao's wife and other members of the "Gang of Four." The three-week itinerary included trips to Beijing, Nanjing, Wuxi, Shanghai, and Guangdong, where they met local production cadres and agricultural scientists, toured communes, and witnessed propaganda displays celebrating the arrest of the "gang" and the defeat of their political faction. Barker records granular technical details and facts and figures, adding a concluding section on the political situation and extracts from his trip diary.Schultz (1902-1998) has signed and dated the front wrapper and noted: "Kindly return to T.W.S." In the text, he has added sidelining and a few short notes, especially concerning points relevant to his research, overlapping with Barker's, into agricultural economics and productivity.

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