Policy Reform and Agrarian Dynamics in China's New Hybrid Economy

Environmental Degradation in Heilongjiang: Policy Reform and Agrarian Dynamics in China’s New Hybrid Economy Joshua S. S. Muldavin Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles This paper analyzes environmental degradation in rural China as structurally embedded in China’s rapid economic growth in the post-Mao era. The theoretical discussion focuses on changes in the organization of production, resource use, and regional development. A critical assessment of the Chinese hybrid economy challenges standard views of the reforms. The overall environmental problems of state socialist agriculture in China have been aggravated following the agrarian reforms of the current regime. Rather than mitigating negative trends, marketization and privatization have brought new, qualitatively different, environmental problems. Resource decline and its attendant social problems are not limited to aspects of transitional economy but are a fundamental part of the new hybrid system. I offer an alternative explanation for interpreting increases in rural productivity as an appropriation and use of collective assets, suggesting that the mining of communal capital is hidden behind the economic growth of the rural economy. Case studies in Heilongjiang Province based on long-term field data provide a profile of three aspects: intensification of land use, agroindustrial pollution, and declining social/communal capital. Further, the political legitimacy of the state is gradually eroded by mutually exclusive fiscal constraints on expenditure and political commitments to peasant producers. Recent repression of political dissent by peasants in hinterland regions forces indirect forms of resistance to state policy. Opportunities for sustainable development are nonetheless present within China, providing that policy makers attempt to address the structural conditions of the rural sector. Key Words: China, Heilongjiang, environment, agriculture, peasants, rural reforms, political ecology, market socialism. he struggle to control resources is central China. In agriculture, these qualitative differ- to the relationship between local societies ences will become increasingly apparent as more Tand larger entities. In this articulation, the critical assessments are made of China’s rapid extraction of economic surplus from rural areas growth over the last seventeen years. by the state and private capital is contingent upon Economic observers tend to herald the reforms entering, dismantling, and transforming local in- of 1978 as the proper pathway for China to follow, stitutions directly involved in natural resource given the failures of the communal period and the use. Based on fieldwork over a fourteen-year pe- pronounced success of market reforms through- riod, this paper uses village-based case studies to out the world (Byrd 1990; Friedman 1990; Dorn show how privatization and deregulation in and Wang 1990; Lin 1993; McMillan and China have brought major change to capital, Naughton 1992; Nolan 1993; Nolan and Sender labor, and natural resource relationships. Agrar- 1992; Wang 1994; Chen et al. 1995). The World ian reforms of the current regime have aggravated Bank trumpets China as its number one success rather than mitigated specific environmental story for postsocialist transition, in contrast to the problems associated with state socialist agricul- difficulties experienced by Russia. More tempered ture in China. Marketization and privatization views welcome the reforms as a move in the right have added new environmental problems to direction, but see difficulties (political, economic, those of the collective period, representing a ma- or cultural) in the transition to a market economy jor obstacle to both medium and long-term efforts (Deng et al. 1992; Croll 1988, 1994; Feuchtwang to introduce sustainable development policies in et al. 1988; Fan 1995; Rozelle 1996; Wang 1996; Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 87(4), 1997, pp. 579–613 ©1997 by Association of American Geographers Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF,UK. 580 Muldavin Bowring 1997). Social and environmental con- sophisticated market-based institutions or inde- cerns are emphasized by a third group who see pendent sources of finance, rural producers came fundamental problems with certain aspects of the to regard these assets as a source of capital. The reforms that undermine their supposed success in rapid mining of communal assets (tangible and solving weaknesses of the communal period intangible) forces us to reevaluate the impacts of (Meisner 1996; Bowles and Dong 1994; Delman short-term coping strategies under shifting re- 1989; Hinton 1990; Chossudovsky 1986; gimes of accumulation—from plan to market, Muldavin 1986, 1992; Chai and Leung 1987; collective to individual, long-term to short-term. Davin 1988; Smith 1993; He 1991; Odegard Furthermore, we are obligated to look at political 1992). The contradictions of decollectivization consequences among rural producers of ecologi- coupled with market reforms and increased pri- cal decline—such as claims by peasants on the vatization suggest that there might be a political state for losses incurred as a consequence of ecological “crisis” in the making (Muldavin “natural” disasters (Blaikie et al. 1994). 1992). This crisis stems from environmental Resistance to the new order has emerged problems resulting from the very success of the among workers and peasants. Whether the un- reforms as well as the political character of the derlying social tensions will become openly ac- portentous deepening of social polarization, as tive politics, or surface through everyday the gulf widens between the haves and have-nots resistance, depends to a large degree on the in China (Knight and Song 1993; Bramall and development of a social (civil) space for dissent Jones 1993). Toargue this viewpoint, I rely on an and discourse (Solinger 1993). At this time, atypical but nevertheless useful case, the rela- there is limited potential for organized social tively undeveloped region of rural Heilongjiang movements on a broad scale in China, demon- Province. Unlike the boom regions, the grass and strating a transfer of authoritarian politics to cropland areas of this border province are simul- the emerging hybrid system.1 taneously exposed to economic growth dynamics This paper is a product of and contribution to and to the limitations of a hinterland region the emerging subdiscipline of political ecology. It (Lyons 1991). As a hinterland, the region pro- situates the Chinese reforms in an analysis crafted duces primary commodities which are exported on the theoretical concerns and insights of politi- to boom regions—precluding a shift to more so- cal ecology, exploring the social impacts and eco- phisticated and sustainable forms of resource use logical consequences of reform, and subsequent and management. Thus, this hinterland case state attempts to maintain legitimacy in the face study of the Chinese economy will demonstrate of growing resistance.2 The implications of social- how the overlooked but nonetheless problematic ist-transition economies’ insertion into global use of natural resources in one area prefigures a production networks can be better understood political-ecological crisis in the making for the through a specific political ecology of China’s own rest of the country. articulation. Using this analysis, emergent envi- The interaction between changes in produc- ronmental and social problems in China appear tion and state policy in China’s reform period can not only as consequences of reform policy, but as 3 best be seen in agriculture, where the rapid tran- linked to global economic restructuring. At the sition from collective to household forms of pro- local level, changes in the organization of produc- duction organization affects land-use practices. tion, and in marketing and consumption patterns These practices in turn are embedded in social result in an intensification of natural resource use 4 perceptions of risk, security, and stability. Non- and environmental degradation. state actors and institutions transform the production process despite the state’s attempts to control them (Watson 1992). A political ecology The Fate of Communal Capital in in this context places a special emphasis on or- the New Hybrid System ganizational forms and capital sources. One of the major problems overlooked in the China is all things to all people: it is “capital’s more celebratory writings on Chinese economic salvation”—a vast new market, a place to invest reform has been the fate of assets built up during East Asia’s surplus capital, a huge labor pool of the communal period. These social, economic, disciplined workers, a vast resource base, a pow- and environmental forms of capital typified local- erful industrial system, and a diversified agricul- level economic development under Mao. Lacking tural and industrial economy. China is also a Environmental Degradation in Heilongjiang 581 Third Worldeconomy, with an enormous peasant of these areas for meeting the real needs of the population facing the tremendous gap between majority of their own populations. Perhaps China economic possibility and everyday actuality. Still, is undertaking a project that will “underdevelop” as its regions of prosperity rapidly merge into the its hinterland regions (Lippit 1978) through the First World (in much the same way as other East accelerated use of local resources. Asian

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