Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T06:18:00.090Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Quality Control: Resource Access and Local Village Elections in Rural China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2009

JANET C. STURGEON
JANET C. STURGEON*
Affiliation:
Geography Department, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6Canada Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

First authorised in 1987, local village elections in China have been much studied by China scholars to assess the emergence of democracy in the People's Republic. Elected village committees were to manage ‘local affairs’, including village lands, as a step towards local self-governance. In place of democracy, this article highlights access and control over natural resources in relation to a local village election first held in Mengsong village, Yunnan, in 2000. A comparison of resource access in 1997 and 2002 shows that over this period, Mengsong villagers lost access to forests, agricultural lands, pastures and mineral resources—‘local affairs’ that an elected committee might have managed. National and local events from 1998 to 2002 signalled a recalibration of people of high and low ‘quality’ (suzhi) in China, with Mengsong shifting cultivators emerging as ‘low quality’ people who threatened China's environment and economic development. These changes in status signified a dramatic shift in who was qualified to manage resources, run local affairs and contribute to China as it entered the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001. The discourse of ‘quality’ resulted in Akha farmers being blamed, and blaming themselves, for their own poverty and resource loss, deflecting attention from the political economic processes that caused their dispossession. Far from the emergence of democracy, the local village election in Mengsong entailed increased state control over people and resources, as China geared up for environmental protection and engagement with the global economy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , March 2009 , pp. 481 - 509
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anagnost, Ann, ‘The corporeal politics of quality (Suzhi)’ in Public Culture, Vol. 16, No.2 (2004), pp. 189–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anagnost, AnnNational Past-Times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China (Durham, NC: Duke University, 1997).Google Scholar
Bakken, Borge, The Exemplary Society: Human Improvement, Social Control, and the Dangers of Modernity in China (Oxford: Oxford University, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
China Forestry Yearbook, 1949–1986 (Beijing: China Forestry Publishers, 1987).Google Scholar
Goodman, David S.G., ‘The campaign to “Open Up the West”: National, provincial-level and local perspectives’ in China Quarterly, Vol. 178 (2004), pp. 319–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodman, David S.G. ‘The politics of the west: Equality, nation-building and colonisation’ in Provincial China, Vol. 7, No. 2 (2002), pp. 127–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gladney, Dru, Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1991).Google Scholar
Grinspoon, Elisabeth, ‘Socialist wasteland auctions: Privatizing collective forest land in China's economic transition (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2002).Google Scholar
Economy, Elizabeth, ‘China's Go West Campaign: Ecological construction or ecological exploitation?’ China Environment Series, Issue 5 (2002) Environmental Change and Security Project, Woodrow Wilson Center.Google Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto and Mouffe, Chantal, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985).Google Scholar
Gao Lishi, Personal communication (1996). Professor Gao teaches at the Minority Nationalities Institute in Kunming and has written extensively about land use change in Xishuangbanna, where he lived from 1949 to the early 1980s.Google Scholar
Horsley, Jamie P., ‘Village elections: Training ground for democratization’ in China Business Review, Vol. 28, No. 2 (2001), pp. 44–52.Google Scholar
Sturgeon, Janet C., ‘Pathways of “Indigenous Knowledge” in Yunnan, China’ in Alternatives, Vol. 32 (2007), pp. 129–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sturgeon, Janet C. Report on Field Research in China and Laos, January 21–March 1, 2006, for National Science Foundation (US) Grant HDS0434043.Google Scholar
Sturgeon, Janet C. ‘Tea for trees: The impact of state policies on the Akha in Yunnan’ in Indigenous Affairs, Vol. 2 (2005a), pp. 38–44.Google Scholar
Sturgeon, Janet C.Border Landscapes: The Politics of Akha Land Use in China and Thailand (Seattle: University of Washington, 2005b).Google Scholar
Sturgeon, Janet C. ‘The true story of Akheu’ in Solinger, D (ed.), Narratives of the Chinese Economic Reforms (Lewiston, ME: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2005c).Google Scholar
Sturgeon, Janet C. ‘Post-socialist property rights for Akha in China: What is at stake?’ in Conversation and Society, Vol. 2, No.1 (2004), pp. 137–161.Google Scholar
Oi, Jean State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan (1989).Google Scholar
Oi, Jean and Rozelle, Scott, ‘Elections and power: The locus of decision-making in Chinese villages’ in China Quarterly, Vol. 162 (2000), pp. 513–539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Unger, Jonathan, ‘Power, patronage, and protest in rural China’ in T. White (ed.), China Briefing 2000: The Continuing Transformation (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000).Google Scholar
O'Brien, Kevin, ‘Villagers, elections, and citizenship in contemporary China’ in Modern China, Vol. 27, No. 4 (2001), pp. 407–435.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, Kevin ‘Implementing political reform in China's villages’ in Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, Vol. 32 (1994), pp. 33–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, Kevin and Li, Lianjiang, ‘Accommodating “Democracy” in a one-party state: Introducing village elections in China’ in China Quarterly, 162 (2000), pp. 465–489.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, Kevin and Li, Lianjiang ‘Selective policy implementation in rural China’ in Comparative Politics, Vol. 32, No. 2 (1999), pp. 167–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hostetler, Laura, Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2001).Google Scholar
Goldman, Merle, ‘China's sprouts of democracy’ in Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 4 (1990), pp. 71–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jhaveri, Nayna, ‘Ecological Construction, China's “Go West” Campaign and Globalization’ Presentation at American Association of Geographers Meetings, New Orleans, LA, March 5–9, 2003.Google Scholar
Menzies, Nicholas K. and Peluso, Nancy, ‘Rights of access to upland forest resources in southwest China’ in Journal of World Forest Resource Management, Vol. 6 (1991), pp. 1–20.Google Scholar
Blaikie, Piers and Muldavin, Joshua, ‘Upstream, downstream, China, India: The politics of environment in the Himalayan region’ in Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 94, No. 3 (2004), pp. 520–548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Rachel, ‘Turning peasants into modern Chinese citizens: “Population Quality” discourse, demographic transition and primary education’ in China Quarterly, Vol. 177 (2004), pp. 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Litzinger, Ralph, ‘The mobilization of “Nature”: Perspectives from north-west Yunnan’ in China Quarterly, Vol. 178 (2004), pp. 488–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrell, Stevan, ‘Introduction’ in S. Harrell (ed.), Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Frontiers (Seattle: University of Washington, 1995), pp. 3–36.Google Scholar
Greenhalgh, Susan and Winckler, Edwin A., Governing China's Population (Stanford: Stanford University, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chan, Sylvia, ‘Research notes on villagers' committee election: Chinese-style democracy’ in Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 7, No. 19 (1998), pp. 507–521.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cresswell, Tim, In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and Transgression (Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University, 1996).Google Scholar
Jianchu, Xu, Research on a Traditional Agroecological System (Kunming: Kunming Institute of Botany, Academia Sinica, 1990).Google Scholar