Introduction Excerpt for Contested Environmentalisms

Introduction

FOR DECADES, TREE PLANTING and forest management have been at the heart of Chinese environmental endeavors.¹ These efforts currently serve as a major part of China’s ambition to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. By employing trees to combat climate change, China—the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world—is playing the environmental card to improve its relationships with other global powers. The Chinese approach to trees and forestry is pivotal to its environmentalism and its green image more generally.

The implications of tree planting extend far beyond the physical action itself. It is impossible to understand modern Chinese environmentalism without knowing how trees have shaped Chinese society. “Planting trees is planting happiness,” reads a faded 2019 billboard near the subway entrance of the National Library of China in Beijing (Figure 0.1). Listed alongside the “socialist core values” of prosperity, democracy, civilization, harmony, and equality, tree planting is depicted as an essential step toward realizing these values. Associating this host of virtues with flourishing trees, the government strives to weave tree planting and its associated cultural values into the Chinese mind.

Contemporary Chinese tree-planting efforts are the culmination of a century-long saga of incorporating forestry into Chinese nation building and cultivating active citizenship. A special issue of the prominent Shanghai newspaper News (Xinwen bao), published during the city’s celebration of Arbor Day on March 12, 1928, uses a wide-ranging collection of slogans to elaborate on how trees could affect almost every aspect of citizens’ lives:

FIGURE 0.1 “Planting trees is planting happiness,” reads a billboard in the subway entrance of the National Library of China in Beijing in August 2019. It is listed alongside the “socialist core values” of prosperity, democracy, civilization, harmony, and equality. Riding a bike, like the one parked near the billboard, also contributes to tree planting thanks to the Ant Forest project by China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba. Photo by author.

Trees are the essays written by land and the art of nature.

Trees are citizens’ companions and the soul of the city.

Trees turn smog-filled Shanghai into a tree-lined city.

Planting trees can improve the beauty of the streets.

Planting trees is the solution to improving citizens’ boring lives.

Planting trees is a first step toward the ruralization of a city.

Planting trees will provide a foundation for the Sun Yat-sen Forest.

Planting trees is the best way to commemorate Sun Yat-sen.

Emphasizing tree planting began in the era of political tutelage.

Planting trees can mitigate flood and drought.

Planting trees can help produce the raw materials for industry.

Planting trees is the most solid method of depositing.

Trees can temper the climate and improve hygiene.

All citizens of a civilized country protect public trees.

Forests are a natural school for children.

Trees are a living textbook for the study of nature.

Protecting trees is the responsibility of citizens.

Tree planting becomes truly valuable only when it becomes a public movement.²

The slogans, together with other articles in the issue, called on Shanghai residents to participate in the tree-planting movement at a time when the Chinese economy was collapsing, military and political conflicts were escalating, and environmental disasters abounded. The slogans promoted tree planting as a solution—even a panacea—for various urgent social problems: trees can yield economic profit; prevent ecological disasters; improve the aesthetics of the city; memorialize Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of Republican China; enhance citizens’ mental health; and educate youth.

Read closely, however, the slogans reveal an inherent tension in promoting afforestation (establishing forests on previously unforested land). On the one hand, they advocate planting trees for their ecological, psychological, and aesthetic benefits. On the other hand, they suggest that trees should be harvested, thereby providing timber for industrial development to boost the ailing economy and improve the welfare of impoverished citizens.³ From the founding of Arbor Day in 1915 and the inauguration of the tree-planting movement in the 1920s through the Greening the Motherland Campaign in the 1950s to the building of the Three-North Shelter Forest (Sanbei fanghulin) since the 1980s, China has carried on a century-long afforestation initiative to popularize environmental notions and solve ecological problems. Nevertheless, there has also been “three great cuttings”—during the Great Leap Forward (1958–60), the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), and the mid-1980s—that devastated China’s forests.

The insertion of tree-cutting rhetoric into a conservationist agenda embodies one of the striking tensions in modern Chinese environmental ideas. Investigating these tensions is the central focus of Contested Environmentalisms. Through an examination of the conceptual and cultural dynamics of trees and forests, this book explores how conservationist ideas in modern China are inherently in conflict, providing both promises and pitfalls. In twentieth-century China, modern conceptions regarding the benefits of trees and conservationist ideas associated with these conceptions began to circulate among the masses and played a significant role in shaping Chinese identity, structuring daily activities, and promoting active citizenship. This book traces the captivating and convoluted journey of Chinese conservationist attitudes.

Contested Environmentalisms contributes to both modern Chinese studies and environmental humanities in three respects: (1) it shows how trees and afforestation initiatives have shaped nationhood and citizenship through the integration of conservationist discourse into nation building in China; (2) by using trees and their surrounding discourse as a lens to examine modern China, it shows the plurality and, more importantly, the contestation of environmentalisms in China through the circulation of conservationist rhetoric; and (3) it historicizes Chinese authoritarian environmentalism and provides a comparative perspective on global environmentalism.

This book demonstrates how trees and forests shape almost all aspects of life in China, deeply affecting political psychology and legitimacy (chapter 1), scientific reasoning (chapters 2 and 5), ethnic identity (chapter 3), youth development and military mobilization (chapter 4), intellectual movements (chapter 5), and the technological enterprise (coda). The implications of tree planting far exceed the actions themselves. In the eyes of politicians, planting a tree compels a person to cultivate a scientific worldview, develop a forward-looking and optimistic vision, and express loyalty to the nation-state. For businessmen, tree planting integrates their pursuit of profit with their ethical responsibilities to disadvantaged regions. For intellectuals, tree planting drives home the message of embracing Western science and its associated political ideology based on democratic participation. Tree planting’s apparent conservationist intentions usually camouflage its opaque but more enduring cultural and political impacts.

I claim that contestation is a defining property of modern Chinese environmentalism. While contestation may seem to be an inherently negative characteristic, it is actually a strength. Contestation endows Chinese environmentalism with its vitality and tenacity. Shuttling between two competing or even contradictory ends, Chinese conservationist ideas make themselves available to an ever-broader audience. Because of this flexibility, contested Chinese conservationist ideas have even contributed to the resilience of Chinese governance insofar as officials have been able to adapt their strategies to support shifting social and political agendas. The coexistence and clash of multiple environmental notions contribute to a rich cultural repertoire that can be evoked and reinvented for future generations. These conflicting varieties of modern Chinese environmentalism function as an engine, thus propelling Chinese environmentalism in an ever-evolving project.

How does the contestation of environmentalism take place in modern China? I argue that the tension between considering tree-planting ideas as universal truths, on the one hand, and as a fluid and constantly adaptable process, on the other hand, gives rise to the contestations of environmental discourse. Modern Chinese environmentalism is thus neither simply a destructive mindset nor a wholehearted embrace of afforestation and conservation. When disparate groups deploy divergent environmental ideas, these ideas respond, thrive, and persist as they accommodate changing social situations.⁴ Though their ideas are contested and even contradictory, each group may actually represent part of the truth. However universal they claim their environmental ideas to be, the ideas are true only in a certain time and space.⁵ Without a specific context, the explanatory power of these putatively universal ideas collapses.

In practice, each party reframes its narrative to achieve its own preconceived goals in the name of the universal. The actual applications manifest themselves not only in a contentious and coercive manner, as in the Chinese borderlands, but also peacefully, among the environmental scientists themselves. In the borderlands, the message of the presumed benefits of trees is pressed upon farmers and ethnic minorities but encounters resistance as it conflicts with their own experiences and frameworks for dealing with the natural world; some inhabitants, for example, consider trees invasive species. Imbued with religious and ethnic connotations, local understandings of desert and afforestation stand in sharp contrast to the universal-conservation rhetoric endorsed by environmental scientists (see chapter 3). On the other hand, the scientists themselves have failed to reach a consensus on the optimal means of conserving the natural world, and they contradict one another on significant issues (as discussed in chapter 2). These conflicts result not only from individuals’ economic, social, and political agendas but also from their personal experiences and professional training. Recognizing these heterogeneous origins and disparate political, economic, and cultural dynamics should contribute to an ethics of mutual respect, humility, and tolerance.

The widespread appeal of trees and the natural world functions as a rhetorical bank that can be drawn upon to meet various cultural and political needs: trees operate as an enduring open-ended discourse that can be transformed and channeled in different directions. While conservation discourse appears to be a prevailing and universal concept, its consumption may encounter local variations, hesitations, and struggles.⁶ In 1980s China, conservation rhetoric led to profound change when it began to threaten the legitimacy of China’s political structure. Published just before the Tiananmen incident in 1989, Dai Qing’s edited volume Yangtze, Yangtze (Changjiang, Changjiang) opposes the construction of the Three Gorges Dam and criticizes the government’s lack of openness to environmental management and its suppression of dissident opinions.⁷ Environmental discourse, when invoked, thus can transcend the environmental dimension and unleash a transformative and even revolutionary power.

The circulation of conservationist ideas in China also has a transnational dimension.⁸ In the 1910s and 1920s, Chinese foresters educated in the United States and Japan promoted forestry as a serious academic discipline and integrated forestry into China’s national economic and social fabric;⁹ tree planting was transformed into a symbol of political legitimacy, peace, and confidence. During the Mao era, Chinese foresters and environmental scientists were indebted to those in the United States and Germany; they extolled the benefits of environmental management for the public welfare and integrated these benefits with revolutionary rhetoric. The transnational vision provides a universal scientific and technological currency that allows politicians, businesspeople, and scientists to camouflage their political goals of social engineering beneath a veneer of environmental conservation.¹⁰ Planting trees not only plants nature (seemingly universal) but also implants values (locally defined).

From a temporal perspective, the generation of these cultural values is a dynamic, robust, and adaptive process, resulting in the coexistence of heterogeneous values and the lack of a single dominant environmentalism in modern China. Raymond Williams identifies a significant feature of this process of change: “There is indeed regular confusion between the locally residual (as a form of resistance to incorporation) and the generally emergent.”¹¹ Older environmental ideas do not vanish; new ones emerge and may contradict the earlier ones. Because of this complex and dynamic process, Williams argues, “no mode of production and therefore no dominant social order and therefore no dominant culture ever in reality includes or exhausts all human practice, human energy, and human intention.”¹² The following chapters scrutinize these contested forms of modern Chinese conservationist ideas—real or symbolic, interpreting nature as static or dynamic, envisioning it on both micro-and macroscales, understanding nature as romantic or militarized, employing native or foreign traditions to address ecological threats, and evoking either a capitalist profit-seeking or socialist grassroots approach to grappling with natural disasters.

Contested Environmentalisms also suggests the limits of advancing conservationist attitudes while they are politicized. To acquire more purchase, environmental ideas have had to gradually adapt to new political and social contexts while finding a way to avoid being marginalized during the breathtaking changes that have been occurring in modern China. Because of their ability to accommodate themselves to changing and even chaotic socio-political conditions, modern Chinese environmental ideas have survived and thrived. But while these conflicting notions offer diverse platforms for environmental ideas to be disseminated across various groups, the original ideas that promoted environmental conservation are being compromised. This process reveals a paradox: the more conservationist ideas in China merge with mainstream political agendas, the greater the risk they face of being marginalized.

Notes

1. Trees are associated with the rise of modern environmentalism. Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Gregory Allen Barton, Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

2. “Zhishu biaoyu” 植树标语 [Tree-planting slogan], special issue, Xinwen bao 新闻报, March 12, 1928. My translation. All translations in this book are mine unless otherwise stated.

3. Tree cutting does not necessarily harm the natural environment. In fact, it can promote forest growth when done properly. The real issue arises from excessive and destructive resource extraction. Here, I am highlighting the potential threats posed by tree cutting.

4. As environmental historian William Cronon contends, “In narrating those consequences, we inevitably interpret their meaning according to human values—but the consequences themselves are as much nature’s choice as our own. To just that extent, nature coauthors our stories.” Recent studies in biology and environmental sciences indicate that plants can see, smell, and feel. They can also broadcast their responses to other plants, insects, and even people. The resilience of conservationist ideas stems not only from environmental scientists and writers who adjust narratives to fit various purposes but also from trees, whose charismatic appeal and beneficial values undergird and “coauthor” the political and social twist of conservation rhetoric. William Cronon, “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” Journal of American History 78, no. 4 (1992): 1373. See also Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (New York, NY: Random House, 2001); Daniel Chamovitz, What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses (New York, NY: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2012).

5. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), with its revelation of the danger of the pesticide DDT to the environment, expresses the need to evaluate environmental values in their contexts. For some, the book was an act of heroism; for others, it was an irresponsible breach of scientific objectivity. But the story is more complicated than a binary opposition between environmentalists and the chemical industry. The book triggered disparate reactions even among environmental scientists. Animal advocates and soil-science groups celebrated Carson’s endeavor because ending the use of the pesticide protects animals and soil. For medical experts, however, pesticides were indispensable in killing the vector of malaria—the mosquito of the genus Anopheles—and also helped prevent famines caused by crop-destroying insects. For foresters, stopping the use of DDT meant certain damage to the health of forests through the return of the gypsy moth and Japanese beetle. Each side represents its own interests and reflects its training. Rachel Carson Papers, box 83, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. For studies on Rachel Carson, see Mark Hamilton Lytle, The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007); Lisa H. Sideris and Kathleen Dean Moore, eds., Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008).

6. Environmental social movements in a global, postcolonial context with far-reaching political implications illuminate China’s own problems. In the postcolonial context, planting trees operates as a catalyst for social movements. In India, the Chipko movement in the 1970s that aimed at protecting trees also became a women’s movement, a peasant insurrection, and a prodevelopment protest. In Kenya, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai heralded the Green Belt movement against the ruling dictatorship in the 1980s by planting trees. Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 128–49; Cajetan Iheka, Naturalizing Africa: Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 126–37. For a depiction of the Chipko movement, see Anna Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 213–44.

7. Dai Qing 戴晴, ed., Changjiang, Changjiang: Sanxia gongcheng lunzheng 长江, 长江：三峡工程论争 [Yangtze, Yangtze: the Three Gorges project debate] (Guiyang: Guizhou renmin chubanshe, 1989). See also Elizabeth Economy, The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 142–45.

8. For modern environmental notions, see Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sörlin Sverker, The Environment: A History of the Idea (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018); Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (1967; repr., New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014); Jedediah Purdy, After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); Grove, Green Imperialism.

9. Recent discussions of the Plantationocene reconsider large-scale global environmental alternations from the perspective of small-scale local experience. Donna Haraway, e.g., contends that the emergence of plantations disrupts local natural environments and fundamentally simplifies local species. The promotion of monoculture was often exercised in a repressive and hegemonic manner. In the United States, the use of slave labor in the plantation economy led to ecological simplifications as well as the large-scale abduction and enslavement of Africans. In China, monoculture timber plantations and agricultural development contextualize the Plantationocene. On the one hand, the government’s commitment to afforestation in China’s borderland as a way of fostering Chinese nationalist sentiment ultimately has its origins in the West; on the other hand, when this monocultural afforestation comes to embody hegemonic state power in shaping the local natural environment, forestry conveys dominant Han Chinese values as forestry is demoted to another form of agriculture. Donna Haraway, “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin,” Environmental Humanities 6, no. 1 (2015): 159–65; Gregg Mitman, “Reflections on the Plantationocene: A Conversation with Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing,” Edge Effects, last modified October 12, 2019, https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/; Yunan Xu, “Land Grabbing by Villagers? Insights from Intimate Land Grabbing in the Rise of Industrial Tree Plantation Sector in Guangxi, China,” Geoforum 96, no. 4 (2018): 141–49.

10. For the colonial nature of environmental practices, see Ramachandra Guha, “Forestry in British and Post-British India: A Historical Analysis,” Economic and Political Weekly 18, no. 44 (1983): 1882–96; Shaul E. Cohen, Planting Nature: Trees and the Manipulation of Environmental Stewardship in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Diana Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome: Environmental History and French Colonial Expansion in North Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007); Richard Widick, Trouble in the Forest: California’s Redwood Timber Wars (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Joachim Radkau, Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment, trans. Thomas Dunlap (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Pamela McElwee, Forests Are Gold: Trees, People, and Environmental Rule in Vietnam (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016); David Fedman, Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020).

11. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1978), 125.

12. R. Williams, Marxism and Literature, 125.