Politics of inclusion and exclusion in the Chinese industrial tree plantation sector: the global resource rush seen from inside China

Abstract

In the last two decades, the Industrial Tree Plantation (ITP) sector has expanded rapidly in southern China causing important changes in land-use and land control. It involves both domestic and transnational corporations, and has provoked widespread conflict and political contestations. The villagers who are affected by the expansion of ITPs have reacted in variegated and complex ways: some of the villagers were incorporated in the ITP sector, while others are excluded; some have embraced the change, while others have complaints; and some of the complaints remained latent, while others developed into (overt or covert) forms of resistance. This paper explores how and why various social groups have responded differently to the expansion of ITPs. This paper reveals the dynamics of villagers' inclusion and exclusion in the ITP sector, covering both 'passive' and 'active' forms of inclusion and exclusion, resulting in differentiated political reactions from villagers. This paper hopes to contribute towards a more comprehensive understanding of the complex engagement of villagers in changes in large-scale land-use and land control not just in the most commonly studied countries in global land grabbing-but inside China, and in land transactions that involved large foreign companies, something that has so far been missed in the literature on land grabbing.

Roaming through the Maze of Maize in Northern Ghana. A Systems Approach to Explore the Long-Term Effects of a Food Security Intervention

“…According to Vicol [54], "The implications of contract farming for accumulation and differentiation are shaped by the historical structures of existing agrarian landscapes (social, economic, political, and institutional), local livelihood patterns and the dynamics of the contract scheme." Xu [55] encountered similar findings in her study on the impact of expanding tea plantations on local communities in China. In line with research of feminist economists on the gendered impacts of agribusiness development in developing countries, Tsikata and Yaro [56] plea for a recognition of diversity within communities in order to understand the impacts of agribusiness interventions.…”

Land grabbing by villagers? Insights from intimate land grabbing in the rise of industrial tree plantation sector in Guangxi, China

“…When a large-scale land deal occurs, previous land users might have better livelihood sources (e.g. off-farm work) in the certain contexts, and then be willing to lease land with relatively reasonable compensations (Xu 2018). This situation is not always worse than a smallscale land grab, wherein villagers lost their land as their primary income source and were not able to be employed by the grabber or find work in any other sector.…”

“…Some villagers are able to adapt and find their own niches within the land-use and land control changes, such as in Ukraine (Mamonova 2015). In few cases, a group of villagers even benefit from the change (Xu 2018, Oberlack et al 2016. Moreover, in some cases, villagers have already become differentiated and spilt into distinct social classes due to their different relationships to the means of production.…”

“…This paper follows working definition of Borras et al (2012) on land grabbing, which focuses on the effect control of land. This implies that land grabbing, which constitutes land control change, is bound to result in the dispossession of previous land users.2 In this paper, 'villagers' is used to describe socially differentiated rural residents.3 Although few villagers might benefit under certain context (seeOberlack et al 2016, Xu 2018 4 Friis et al (2016) have already studied small-scale land grabs.5 In this sense, those grabbers from outside (the community) and those villagers who do not acquire local land at the expense of kin and fellow villagers then are not considered as intimate land grabbers.6 In this paper, ITPs not only refer to those large-scale plantations owned/controlled by corporations, but also include large-scale individual-owned and small-scale villager-owned ones. Among these, eucalyptus trees (especially the fast-growing species E. grandis and E.urophylla) have become the most popular in Guangxi, and are thus the main focus in my study.7 The sites include one county where foreign investors are actively involved in the ITP sector, one county where a state-owned farm is engaged, four counties where independent planters are dominated.…”

“…There are exceptions when villagers have better alternatives (e.g. off-farm work in urban areas) and actively get excluded (seeXu 2018).…”