He wrote his doctoral thesis on the Marxist intellectual, Qu Qiubai, who was influential in forming leftist literary theory before he was executed by the Nationalist government in 1935.

Together with Edward Friedman and Mark Selden, Pickowicz spent several years in a north China village interviewing and observing residents and local officials.

At the University of California, San Diego, Pickowicz and his colleague Joseph Esherick inaugurated a doctoral program in modern Chinese history which has produced several dozen students whose theses have been published as books.

The great difference from the first volume, however, was that the authors have “lost their illusions.” This is best illustrated, Bianco felt, through “the themes of patronage and clientelism, and the privileges which have been perpetuated from Mao’s revolutionary era through to the current post-revolutionary era.” These themes were present in the first volume, but the second one details “the themes of patronage and clientelism, and the privileges which have been perpetuated from Mao’s revolutionary era through to the current post-revolutionary era,” and the authors make clear “not only the favours but also the denunciations and recantations which disgraced leaders are forced into by changes in the Party line, beginning with Geng Changsuo (1900- 1985), Wugong’s established head.” Bianco also praises the book for its refusal to condemn the opportunistic leader, Geng, who made his family rich but himself lived simply, and who kept the loyalty of the villagers even when the Red Guards were sent to unseat him: “He is authoritarian without mistreating the villagers.” [4] Bianco concludes that “Nothing is one-sided, or caricatural in this book, not even the condemnation of Maoism or its freeloading inferior successors.

It is a sober, concise, incisive account, quite often simply complemented by a final line or concluding phrase.”[4] Pickowicz told an interviewer that he was made to feel unwelcome when he first did research in Chinese archives but the situation gradually improved.