By Judith Shapiro, American University

Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, April 3, 2005

The core questions these papers address include: What is going on in Inner Mongolia right now?  What are the social justice issues, and are they being addressed?  What is at stake in terms of ethnic survival, way of life, and sense of place?  What is at stake in terms of ecological degradation?  What is the role of the state now, as compared with, say, the Qing, the Republican era, or the Mao years, has the State learned anything from past mistakes?  How is the discourse of environmental protection being used, is it being used to justify coercive policies that violate human rights and continue the Chinese state’s historical expansion and effort to “pacify the frontiers” (zhibian)?  How can environmental protection be reconciled with social justice?  What kind of “science” is being used to restore grasslands ecology, is it sound ecological science that understands the entire landscape, or is it piecemeal (trying to reclaim one sand-dune at a time) and target-oriented (toward a certain number of new trees each year, no matter if half die before the next planting)?

I would like to start with an anecdote that illustrates some of the reasons that Beijing is taking Inner Mongolian desertification so seriously.  Last summer, I participated in a few Chinese environmental meetings, including one that the local NGOs called “the famous people’s meeting” because American environmentalists Lester Brown and Dennis Hayes were featured speakers.  Lester Brown wanted to see how the Gobi Desert was knocking at the gates of Beijing, so the hosts arranged a car accompanied by top environmental protection officials, and I had a chance to go too.  After a four or five hour ride into Hebei province, we came to the spot where the Gobi was closest to Beijing.  There was a big poster explaining what was being done to turn the desert back to grasslands -- clearly, this was an exhibition spot, often visited by top leaders and used to justify all sorts of expenditures and policies.  We saw lots of fences, and the local people pointed at the places where they were no longer permitted to graze their animals before the officials shooed them away.

The point is that for Beijing, Inner Mongolia’s environmental problems are a national security issue.  They are also a national “face” issue.  The 2008 Olympics would be a disaster if they were covered in one of Beijing’s famous and increasingly frequent sandstorms.  It is humorous but sad that, as someone told Chris Atwood, local officials have told some herders they would be able to have sheep and goats back after the Olympics.

The other point I would like to underline at the outset is that Inner Mongolia has been the location of forcible relocations for a long time.  There is a legacy of misuse of the land, but now the indigenous people are being asked to pay the price for other people’s mistaken policies.  We should remember that many of the Han Chinese in-migrants were also forced there – as part of the Production-Construction Army Corps from the CCP’s early years but especially during the War Preparation Movement to defend against the Soviet Union – and as part of the so-called Educated Youth movement, some 20 million young Han Chinese were forced to “volunteer” to move out of urban areas to “learn from” the peasants.  Two million of these were sent to the border areas, to prepare for war, transform the land, and transform themselves.  As Lao Gui (Ma Bo) wrote in his classic, Blood-red Sunset (xuese huanghun), the suffering of these young people was matched by the suffering of the land beneath their unwilling abuse.

Turning now to the four papers: Mr. Sodbilig’s paper presents a poignant story of “reclamation” (we should be careful of the terminology being used here!).  He reminds us that the loss of pasture is not a recent phenomenon, that environmental stress was already present during the Qing, and that even then the State attempted to restrict numbers of people and livestock for a time.  He also shows the tenacity of the local people trying to resist lifestyle change, as they chose to move Northwards rather than adapt.  It is a story of land fragmentation, of interrupted communication, and of longstanding use of Mongol lands to serve the Empire with dairy products and horses.  Thus this paper provides an extremely important historical context.

Hong Jiang’s paper tells us a story of “ecological construction” in which “aggressive approaches that undermine ecological processes” focus on biomass production rather than native species, and the landscape is not well understood by those who seek to convert it, one water-storing sand-dune at a time.  Dealing with the landscape in a piecemeal fashion leads to friction among neighbors (as sandstorms move despite efforts to conquer them), while the rotational grazing that made sustainable pasturage possible has been interrupted by the fences that sprang up everywhere when land was assigned to families during the reform era of the early 1980s.  In her study area, there has been general acceptance of relocation and there are more applicants to move to town than funds available, perhaps because the current policies have exacerbated differences between wealthy and poor, and many have very poor land and little hope for the future.  Finally, of great interest is her point that mechanical tree-planting target numbers are measures of local leaders’ political success, so the numbers are pursued despite widespread die-off of trees every year and despite the fact that many planted tree species are not native to the area and merely deplete the underlying water table. 

I would like to add here a note that the current leadership’s very serious efforts to deal with China’s environmental problems tend toward a preoccupation with technical solutions but little understanding of local conditions or consideration of human factors.  Thus even the ecological principles that are being invoked in trying to restore the local environment are not completely suitable to the local circumstance.

Turning now to Jeanine Brown’s paper, in which she asks, “Has environmental degradation been a primary cause of state-sponsored resettlement in Inner Mongolia,” I would encourage her also to ask the inverse question, “Has state-sponsored resettlement in Inner Mongolia been a primary cause of environmental degradation?”  I have already mentioned the Han settlement of frontier areas, particularly during the Mao period.  Let us add to that some deeper understanding of the centuries-old Han tradition of “civilizing” what they considered “primitive” and “backward” peoples, a point also well made in Mr. Togochog’s paper.  While Ms. Brown’s investigation of the legal background of the term “ecological” or “environmental refugees” is extremely valuable, there is a fundamental difference between state-sponsored, coercive resettlement nominally for environmental reasons and the environmental refugees of the tiny island of Tuvalu, fleeing sea-level rise due to climate change, or the Sudanese who have been forced into Darfur because of drought.  In the case of Inner Mongolia, the State is using the language of poverty alleviation and environmental protection to achieve longterm goals vis-a-vis ethnic minorities.  The irony of this sort of double-speak is well brought out in Ms. Brown’s quotation concerning “herdsmen who need protection from sandstorms.”

Finally, Enhebatu Togachog’s excellent human rights paper is the clearest statement rejecting the “civilizing” project of the Han.  The ratios speak for themselves: where once there was 1 Han to 5 Mongols, now there are 6 Han to one Mongol.  More than half a million herders are being relocated to “small towns and elsewhere” within five years.  The paper diverges considerably from Jiang Hong’s as to the level of acceptance of policies such as fencing and moving. 

If there is a critique to be made of this paper, it is that in my view the policy of “ecological migration” is at least partially motivated by a genuine concern on the part of the Chinese state concerning environmental issues rather than a desire to eradicate traditional Mongol culture.  However, on the evidence of these papers these policies are indeed being implemented in much the same heavy-handed mode we saw so often during the Mao years.  The forcible relocations into the grasslands of that period have now have become forcible relocations away from them.  In neither case has such State-led movement of people been respectful of the land itself.

In conclusion, these papers bring out the poignant contradictions of a State awakening to environmental issues but preoccupied with “face,” afraid of democratic processes and debate and so depriving itself of the best ecological and human science, still gripped by a Han sense of knowing what is best for other Chinese peoples and seeing farming and town life as superior to the nomadic life.  This is a State that is still eager to “settle” its border regions and ambivalent about China’s multi-ethnic character.  It is ironic and, from the point of view of an environmentalist, unacceptable, that the language of environmental protection and poverty alleviation is being used in the service of destruction of culture and forcible resettlement.  “Development” is still being imposed from above, with limited understanding of local landscapes and practices, and with little consideration for the history of the region or the social justice issues that the current situation requires.

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