Grassland management and views of nature in China since 1949: regional policies and local changes in Uxin Ju, inner Mongolia

Abstract

This paper surveys grassland management in China during the socialist period that began in 1949, examining state policies and local practices as well as views of nature underlying both. The case study is set in Uxin Ju, a Mongol-dominated community in western Inner Mongolia that enjoyed a national reputation in the 1960s for its enthusiasm in the campaign to transform its sandy land. This paper adopts a historical–cultural perspective. The grassland is a historical category whose formulation by the state has changed with the political–economic ideologies of the regime. At the same time, local views of the grassland have also changed, which facilitated the adoption of aggressive grassland practices. By examining grassland management and local change as a cultural process, this paper seeks to understand a dimension of grassland change that has not attracted much study in China. In several ways this paper contributes to the study of environmental history in socialist China. First, it adds to a complex appraisal of regional environmental change during the Mao era by demonstrating both grassland improvement and degradation in Uxin Ju. Second, this paper locates the agency of the local people in both predictable and surprising ways, both in resistance to and appropriation of state policies. Third, by covering the entire socialist period from 1949, this paper lends insights into the understanding of continuities and breaks in grassland management between the Mao (1949–1976) and post-Mao (1976–present) eras.

Introduction

Socialist China has had a tumultuous relationship with the environment. During the Mao era between 1949 and 1976, China treated the environment harshly. Shapiro (2001), for example, argues that the mistreatment of humans in class warfare led to the destruction of the environment: forests were cut, slopes eroded, grassland opened, and lakes filled. During the post-Mao era, as the state shifted its focus from class struggle to economic development, the government has paid more attention to environmental issues (Qu, 1989, XBW, 2000). But even as some environmental problems have been alleviated, the single-minded pursuit of economic growth has led to continued urban air and water pollution and rural land degradation (Jahiel, 1997, Muldavin, 2000). These national trends in environmental history during China’s socialist period have been discussed by Edmonds, 1994, Smil, 1984, Smil, 1993, and, to a lesser extent, Jahiel, 1997, Ross, 1988, Sanders, 1999.

While national-level environmental studies have offered us important insights into the general state of China’s environment and national policies, their national focus has resulted in their insufficient attention to the complexity in regional environmental realities. Also lacking is serious treatment of environmental practices and perceptions that can best be understood in the context of local human-environmental conditions. Understanding China’s diverse environmental history requires analyses at regional and local scales. Taking Uxin Ju, a community in western Inner Mongolia, as a case study, this paper surveys changes in regional policies and local practices in grassland management, examining changing views of nature in both official discourses and local residents’ perceptions since 1949. This long-range study not only offers a window into China’s environmental history during the entire socialist period, but also provides an opportunity for comparisons of environmental affairs between the Mao and post-Mao eras.

This paper adopts a historical–cultural perspective. In particular, it considers the grassland as a historical category whose formulation by the state has changed with political–economic policies. Following the notion that perceptions of nature have important environmental consequences (Cronon, 1996, Escobar, 1999), this paper examines grassland change as a cultural process. Combining the concern for political–economic processes in political ecology and the attention to environmental discourses in post-structural environmental studies, I explore the state’s ideologies of nature as part of a large political–economic change, and examine local people’s views of nature as they interact with the state. Environmental discourses/perceptions and landscape change are mutually constituted (Escobar, 1996, Peet and Watts, 1996, Zimmerer, 2000); not only do meanings ascribed to the environment actively shape environmental policies and resource use (Bryant, 2001, Fairhead and Leach, 1998, Vandergeest et al., 1999), but environmental change can also alter or promote particular discourses and attitudes toward nature. Informed by these understandings, this paper examines how the state’s environmental discourses have brought about changes in local grassland practices and the landscape, and how these changes have led to alterations in local views of nature, which in turn further enhance intensive grassland practices. “State” and “local” are not, however, monolithic and essential categories (Moore, 1999, Moore, 1996); thus, this paper acknowledges political tensions between the central and regional governments, and pays attention to the linkage between state discourses and local views of nature.

This historical–cultural approach corresponds to a less explored dimension in Chinese environmental studies. While official ideologies of the environment have been underscored (e.g., Shapiro, 2001; on the Mao era; Williams, 2001 on post-Mao grassland management), local views and perceptions of the environment have attracted less attention (except, perhaps, Humphrey and Sneath, 1996). Much of the existing work has focused on the physical aspects of environmental change (e.g., Li et al., 2000, Zhang and Skarpe, 1995), evolution and implementation of environmental policies (e.g., Jahiel, 1997, Longworth and Williamson, 1993, Smil, 1984, Smil, 1993), and the political and economic aspects of regional or local environmental degradation (e.g., Hershkovitz, 1993, Muldavin, 1997, Muldavin, 2000, Williams, 2001). Not only does historical–cultural perspective help us understand the underlying forces of political–economic processes and environmental changes, exploring the connection between official discourses and local views of nature also offers a window into the deeply entangled relationship between state and society.

This paper contributes to Chinese environmental studies in several ways. First, it adds to a complex appraisal of regional environmental change during the Mao era by demonstrating both grassland improvement and degradation in Uxin Ju. Recently, the meta-narrative of the Mao era as a uniformly “dark age” has been challenged (see Gao, 1999, Han, 2000, Ho, 2003, Qin, 1995). During the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961), for example, while trees were felled in other parts of China to feed thousands of steel-making furnaces (Shapiro, 2001), the Inner Mongolia region promoted the planting of trees and shrubs to transform the desert (Ulanhu, 1990). During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), however, while political interference was less in rural areas as compared to the Great Leap years (Gao, 1999, Han, 2000), the Inner Mongolian grassland suffered the most serious damage since the establishment of socialism. Significant geographic differences in regional policies and ecological conditions account for diverse regional and local changes.

Second, this paper locates the agency of the local people in both predictable and surprising ways. Local resistance is a common response to attempted state control over a region’s resources (see Bryant and Bailey, 1997, Scott, 1998, Williams, 2001), and Uxin Ju’s experience during the Cultural Revolution exemplifies this. As the state opened the grassland against the Mongols’ interests, people in Uxin Ju resisted. Over time, however, the policies of this period left no significant effects on local views of the grassland. In contrast, lasting changes in local practices and views of nature occurred precisely when the local people appropriated state policies as they appeared to follow along with the state’s ideologies. During the Great Leap Forward and the ensuing years, Mongols in Uxin Ju actively engaged in the campaign to transform the grassland, efforts which gained them a national reputation. During the post-Mao era, they also actively participated in the state’s new project of economic modernization by managing their grassland more intensively. Both periods have had profound impacts on the Mongols’ grassland use and attitudes toward the grassland to the present day.

My third contribution concerns the trajectory of environmental history in socialist China. While the Mao and post-Mao eras have promoted different environmental policies, this paper will show considerable continuity between the two eras in grassland management, both in the way the environment was seen by the state and in the ways that local practices and perceptions have changed. For example, despite their different policies, the two eras have dealt with nature similarly, as both treated the grassland primarily as a political or economic instrument, and as local grassland practices developed during the 1950s and 1960s have become fundamental in supporting the post-Mao grassland management. Significant differences between the approaches of the two eras also exist, such as the recent sensitivity to ecological conditions. Understanding these historical continuities and breaks in grassland management can help inform China’s search for a more sustainable environment.

This paper is organized according to four stages of grassland management in Uxin Ju: grassland protection (1949–1957), the campaign to reform the sandy grassland (1958–1965), the destruction and politicization of the grassland (1966–1976), and the so-called “scientific” management approach (1976–present). During each stage, the state, out of politico-economic concerns, promoted a distinct view of nature: from first seeing the grassland as the basis for the Mongolian economy, to viewing nature as insufficient given the demands of socialism, to treating grassland as a tool of political struggle, to post-1976 scientific management designed to meet the needs of economic development. In the meantime, grassland practices in Uxin Ju have evolved from protection and small-scale planting to large-scale interventions and more intensive use; significant cultural change has also followed. Uxin Ju is a Mongol-dominated community, and in the traditional attitude of its residents, nature is sacred and the grassland is unchangeable by humans. This attitude has gradually been replaced by views that consider nature to be inadequate, malleable, and in need of reform in order to improve the local economy. The traditional ties between Mongolian identity and nomadic grazing have also been weakened, making room for more intensive land management. While this paper will primarily follow a temporal order, I will reflect in its conclusion on continuities and breaks in grassland management between the Mao and post-Mao eras.¹