Abstract
In light of ecological disasters in China and social alienation among the Chinese people, this article argues that ecology must take precedence over economy, agriculture over industry and finance, and life over money and profit. The article focuses on the New Rural Reconstruction Movement and the Loving Home Village campaigns and identifies several grassroots initiatives in search for pathways to social and ecological transition. It presents in detail the trajectories of Little Donkey Farm, Liang Shuming Rural Reconstruction Center, Yun Jianli, and Yang Zhengxi, which are examples of how to mobilize both urban and rural communities to participate in social and ecolo- gical transformation.
At a Crossroads
In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the United States, with the exercise of its financial and military hegemony, has launched a new Cold War against China. The US–China relationship has become the main conflict among the complex contradictions in the world, but it is a manifestation of the decay and implosion of capitalism in the stage of financial capitalism. Despite the trade war, technological sanctions, and media accusations, China has explicitly declared its task to be the search for an alternative path of transforming itself toward ecological civilization, and of defending financial and food sovereignty.
The core countries have continuously adopted quantitative easing to transfer their own crisis to the periphery countries. China, as the factory of global economic growth, is importing global inflation as well as global deflation. A sudden plague of new coronaviruses broke out all over the world, leading to a deepening crisis of globalization. In this catastrophe, the United States internally marginalized the colored, weak, sick, disabled, and elderly, and externally blamed China for the United States’ incompetence in fighting the epidemic and intensified the new Cold War to divert its domestic contradictions and popular discontents. Yet, we can avoid war and maintain peace if we are able to overcome capitalist developmentalism.
China is at a crossroads: one path is to continue to follow Western modernization and to increase its global financial dependence, which will inevitably lead to a confrontation with the United States and European financial blocs. If so, China will not only face competition with the United States and Europe for capital flows but also for raw materials and markets, due to the “de-coupling and de-Chinaization” policy of the United States and Europe. The other path is to change from capitalist modernization to ecological civilization, together with the implementation of international and internal circulations, particularly the policy of rural revitalization, supporting the real economy and collective entities, in order to achieve the utmost goal of common prosperity.
Negotiating with the Development Trap
After a century of aggression by imperialist powers, new China, mobilizing its material and human resources on a continental scale, has apparently “succeeded” in building its industrial base largely using rural resources in the first three decades and in catching up with “global citizenship” since the Reform era. Its “success” in the development of its economy and enhancement of people’s living standards is, however, wrought with contradictions, especially in the areas of environmental contamination, financialization, and shortages in fresh water and energy, which pose a serious challenge to China’s sustainability.
Faced with critiques of China’s contributions to global warming, with China’s CO2 emission as an often-quoted reprimand, and faced with the urgent need to clean up pollution and restore ecological balance, China has begun serious efforts in redressing environmental issues in the last 20 years with some remarkable outcomes.
In October 2021, at the United Nations (UN) Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) in Kunming, under the theme of “Ecological Civilization: Building a Shared Future for All Life on Earth,” Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the executive secretary of the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity, recognized China’s work in reducing pollution, restoring degraded land, conserving species and ecosystems, and tackling poverty. She proposed that China’s ecological red line program could be applied to Southeast Asia with the Belt and Road Initiative to help these countries meet their post-2020 targets. 1 China’s proposal, named “Drawing a ‘Red Line’ for Ecological Protection to Mitigate and Adapt to Climate Change—Nature-Based Solution Initiative,” has been selected by the UN as one of the 15 best nature-based solutions around the globe. The program identifies China’s crucial ecological zones and enforces strict protection in those areas.
In 2007, at the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, orientation toward “ecological civilization” was formulated. In October 2021, China released the “Responding to Climate Change: China’s Policies and Actions,” stating that
China will implement its new development philosophy and create a new development dynamic to boost high-quality development…. It will promote a comprehensive transition to green and low-carbon economic and social development, bring a fundamental change to its eco-environment by accumulating small changes, and achieve a model of modernization in which humanity and nature exist harmonious. (PRC, 2021)
In October 2022, at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, it was stated that the main goal is to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation through adopting Chinese-style modernization, with the characteristics of common prosperity, of human living in harmony with nature, and of choosing a path to peaceful development (People’s Daily, 2022).
It seems that any glamorous claims about “Ecological Civilization,” “Common Prosperity,” “Green and Sustainable Development,” and “Chinese-style modernization” with socialist Chinese characteristics, are, at best, good intention, and at worst may serve to conceal the intrinsic problem. Put simply, “a new development philosophy” and the “Chinese model of modernization” call for remedial measures within a development paradox: the double exploitation of humans and nature. In the international division of labor, China has played the role of “world factory” in the last four decades. Being accused as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China has steadily reduced the intensity of its carbon emissions and reinforced the effort to achieve its Nationally Determined Contributions to combat climate change. In September 2020, President Xi Jinping pledged at the UN General Assembly that China would aim for its carbon dioxide emissions to peak by 2030 and to have carbon neutrality by 2060. Other pledges include having renewable energy sources account for 25% of total energy consumption by 2030; installing enough solar and wind power generators to have a combined capacity of 1.2 billion kilowatts by 2030; and boosting forest coverage by around six billion cubic meters by 2030 (People’s Daily, 2022).
China also pledged to make efforts to reverse the rapid growth of its carbon dioxide emissions. From 2005 to 2020, there was a drop in carbon intensity which meant a total reduction of about 5.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile, the average coal consumption of thermal power plants had decreased to 305.8 g of standard coal per kWh, which was a reduction of 370 million tons of carbon dioxide emission by coal-fired power generation units in 2020 compared with 2010.
It should be noted that China’s moves to remedy the energy issue is combined with its poverty-alleviation efforts, hence having social benefits at the same time. China has built more than 26 million kW of photovoltaic power stations, and thousands of “sunshine banks” in poor rural areas, benefiting about 60,000 poor villages and 4.15 million poor households. Its installed capacity for new energy storage stood at 3.3 million kW, the largest in the world (People’s Daily, 2022). Hence, as a policy taken up by the state, economic concerns can be combined with social equity pursuits. China is the first developing country to realize the UN Millennium Development Goals by reducing the poor by 50% and eliminating extreme poverty in 2020. More than 800 million rural people have been lifted out of destitution.
One might think that the pandemic, despite its disruption of global economic activities and its toll on human lives, could at least help alleviate the dire ecological crisis. Yet, economic concerns have remained paramount. The Global Carbon Budget 2021 report, released in November 2021, stated that CO2 emissions fell by 5.4% in 2020, due to the constraints of the COVID-19, but rose by about 4.9% in 2021 to 36.4 billion tons, which brought emissions almost back to 2019 levels (Friedlingstein et al., 2022, pp. 1933–1934). The promise of post- pandemic “green recovery” has unfortunately not come true.
China faces the challenge of “green recovery” as it is still trapped in the development dilemma. Amid the grave challenges of climate collapse, apart from state policies implemented across the board in China and manifested in China’s foreign policies of trade and global division of labor, the actors for change need to be grassroots communities, coupled with a general overhaul in mainstream values and cultures based on developmentalism. Resistance to globalization can be seen in places where the logic of modernization is fraught with tensions and adverse consequences. It is in looking into, and learning from, alternative grassroots practices that a radical paradigm shift may be founded.
Policy of Rural Revitalization
Encountering the triple traps of economic decline, ecological crisis, and the pandemic, China has adjusted its policy by returning to counter-cyclical measures through creating effective demand. In July 2020, in order to deal with the breakup of global supply chains and the economic downturn, the central government proposed establishing “a new development pattern centered on ‘internal circulation,’ and speed up a ‘dual circulation’ growth model in which ‘internal circulation’ and ‘international circulation’ promote each other.” 2 Internal circulation implies to strengthen domestic economy, particularly rural economy. The proportion of administrative villages connected to optical fiber cable and 4G reached 98% nationwide, and the proportion of poor villages connected to broadband also reached 98%, significantly improving the level of network coverage in rural areas. Furthermore, local governments invested about RMB 34 trillion ($4.9 trillion) into “new infrastructure” projects such as 5G, Internet, industrial Internet, cloud computing, blockchain, data centers, smart computing centers, and smart transportation. 3
China urges for the policy of rural revitalization which aims to foster rural collective economy as an alternative development strategy. It is considered as “a ballast” of encountering the global crisis. It guarantees to maintain stable and long-lasting land contractual relations in rural areas and implement the policy of extending the second round of land contract for another 30 years after its expiry. There are two characteristics that make rural land impossible for it to be alienated and disposable at will like ordinary property: first, it has the function of ensuring food security and the supply of important agricultural products for the state and society; and second, it has the function of ensuring survival and stability for peasants and the countryside. Through developing new collective economy, it hopes to promote urban–rural interaction and social–ecological agriculture for absorbing surplus capital.
As an old Chinese saying goes, “to avoid a small disturbance, stay in a city; to avoid a big upheaval, stay in a village.” In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the downturn in the world economy, more than 30 million migrant rural workers lost their jobs and returned to their village home, but the general social situation remained stable. The reason is that peasant workers still have a piece of land and a house in the countryside.
Naturally, China is a big country of small peasants and rural communities. On March 1, 2019, when explaining a policy for integrating small peasants with modernized agriculture, Han Jun, Vice-Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, admitted that “China is still a big country with millions of small peasants.” The number of small peasants accounts for 98% of the agency of agricultural activities and 90% of the agricultural workers. The amount of arable land that small peasants cultivate accounts for 70% of the whole of arable land. Now there are 230 million peasant households. Each household has around on average 7.8 mu of arable land (one hectare = 15 mu). There are 210 million peasant households with less than 10 mu of arable land. About 70 million peasant household are involved in rural land transfers, which accounts for 37% of the land under the household responsibility system. The figure has slightly come down in recent years. Han recognized that peasants consider land as “the base of livelihood and survival.” Even though a peasant is offered to get an urban household registration, s/he is not willing to give up his/her farmland and residential land in the countryside: “we have land at home village, no matter we go to the city or return to home, we still have our base.” 4
In addition, from 2017 to 2019, the Central Agricultural Commission and Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs organized the assessment and verification process of rural collective properties countrywide. As of the end of 2019, the 5,695 townships, 602,000 villages, and 2,385,000 production groups, which meant a total of 2,992,695 units across the country, submitted reports on their collective assets. According to the reports made public in July 2020, the rural collectives had enormous assets. The collective land area was 6.55 billion mu. The book value of assets was RMB 6.5 trillion; of this, the operating assets accounted for RMB 3.1 trillion or 47.4%, and nonoperating assets accounted for RMB 3.4 trillion or 52.6%. There were 11,000 wholly owned enterprises of rural collectives, with a total asset of RMB 1.1 trillion. Moreover, the proportion of fixed asset was close to half: fixed asset (nonoperating) was RMB 3.1 trillion; of this two-thirds were fixed assets used in public services such as education, technology, culture, and health. Furthermore, the assets were highly concentrated at the village level; village level asset totaled RMB 4.9 trillion or 75.7% of total asset; the average per village was RMB 8.164 million; the total for the township level and the production group level was RMB 0.7 trillion and RMB 0.9 trillion, respectively, accounting for 11.2% and 13.1% of the total, respectively (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, 2020).
New Rural Reconstruction Movement
Over the past 20 years, we have actively engaged in the new rural reconstruction movement in China. As a response to the problems caused by industrialization and modernization in a developing country such as China, rural reconstruction has been designed as a political and cultural project to defend peasant communities and agriculture. These grassroots efforts are separate from, parallel to, and sometimes in tension with projects initiated by the state. As an attempt to construct a platform for direct democracy and to experiment on participatory, urban–rural integration for sustainability, the Chinese model of rural reconstruction may help build a politics to alternative modernization.
From the 1920s to the 1940s, several well-known scholars of different visions were actively involved in rural reconstruction movements. James Yen who received a Western, Christian education, promoted a mass education movement and civil society in Ding County, north China, and later in southwest China. Liang Shuming, Confucian, and Buddhist advocated rural governance through regeneration of traditional knowledge and culture in Zouping Township, Shandong Province. Lu Zuofu, owner of a shipping company, established social enterprises and public facilities to modernize Beibei town, southwest China. Tao Xingzhi combined livelihood education with communism. Huang Yanpei designed vocational training programs for rural people. After 1949, James Yen continued his rural reconstruction projects in the Philippines, and different countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
Following James Yen’s and Liang Shuming’s spirit of rural regeneration, a new rural reconstruction movement emerged at the turn of the twenty-first century. Its background has been rural degradation while China’s export-led manufacturing industries and the demand for cheap labor are besieged with a world economy battered by financial crises. There has been a heated debate about the sannong wenti (three dimensions of the agrarian issue) in academia and the media. Against this background, some intellectuals, NGO workers, and local villagers have worked together to explore ways of regenerating rural society, with some viewing it as part of their poverty alleviation work, and others seeing their commitment as providing another mode of modernization, in the spirit of Liang and Yen, different from the mode of development of Western urbanization.
They aim to promote social participation, ecological agriculture, sustainable livelihood, and the rural reconstruction movement. There are five main areas: (a) experiments of rural regeneration and peasants’ training programs; (b) agroecology, community-supported agriculture, and ecological architecture; (c) community colleges for peasant workers; (d) organizations and trainings for university students; (e) traditional cultural diversity and local good governance.
The first initiative was the James Yen Rural Reconstruction Institute (2004–2007), which provided peasants with free training courses and mobilized university students to work for the villages. Apart from that, Green Ground Eco-Centre was founded in 2006, promoting ecological farming and rural–urban cooperation. Little Donkey Farm was established in 2008, with an area of 230 mu (about 15.3 hectares) and situated in the suburbs of Beijing. It promotes community-supported agriculture and facilitates rural–urban interactions. The Liang Shuming Rural Reconstruction Centre (LRRC) was set up in 2004, to provide university students with training programs for working in the countryside.
Little Donkey Farm
Little Donkey Farm was established in April 2008, comprising 230 mu and situated in Beijing’s Haidian District. Little Donkey Farm is a collaborative effort between Beijing’s Haidian District’s Agriculture and Forestry Ministry, Renmin University’s School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Reconstruction Department. Little Donkey Farm’s mission is to include agriculture in the tertiary industry of culture and heritage through mobilizing not just farmers, but citizens, NGOs, and governments to join the sustainable agricultural movement. Little Donkey Farm also seeks to use international experience to build “civic agriculture and cooperative sustainable agriculture.” Little Donkey Farm boasts a core research base, connecting rural and urban areas through affiliation with Green Ground Eco-Tech Centre (Beijing), founded in 2003. Green Ground Eco-Tech Centre has extensive experiences in urban and rural ecological agriculture. These innovative and integrated explorations continue today.
Little Donkey Farm has continued this ecological tradition through an ecological planting pattern and establishment of community-supported agriculture (CSA). This citizen’s farm management model has met with support from Beijing residents, totaling approximately 700 members. Through Little Donkey Farm’s CSA model and ecological agriculture practices, the Farm adheres to the concept of sustainable living. Thus far, the Farm’s successes have been reported in news agencies both at home and abroad, including Xinhua News Agency, China Central Television, People’s Daily, Beijing Television, and over 120 media outlets.
Ecological agriculture is a pressing concern worldwide and is causing people across the globe to increase their awareness on issues surrounding food importance and sustainable livelihoods. Little Donkey Farm has promoted Community-Supported Agriculture (cooperatives, individuals, families, enterprises) for the last 15 years. Now there are over 500 CSA farms, about 100,000 members, over 3,500 ha of toxic-free farmland, 25,000 t less of using chemical fertilizers, 300,000 L less of chemical pesticides, over 12 million mu of management of animal waste and straws. Every year more than 50 CSAs are newly established and the annual increase rate is 10%.
Little Donkey Farm has facilitated exchanges between rural producers and urban consumers. Through organizing over 1,000 organic food markets to promote community consumption and fair trade, over 1 million consumers in Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen, Chengdu, Kunming, and Shenzhen, support organic agriculture and sustainable livelihood, and ideas on organic and ecological lifestyle are disseminated among 3 million consumers.
Little Donkey Farm has mobilized rural reconstruction networks to join Participatory Guarantee System (PGS). Most CSA farms in China have already joined PGS and more than half of them could meet its requirements. It advocates new modes of organic food certification with diversity of farm products, together with characteristics of social engagement.
The central government is gradually recognizing the importance of defending peasant rights, village sustainability, and agricultural security. Recently, rural revitalization has become the utmost important policy among all important tasks of national development strategy. For the last 20 years, the central government has invested a lot on basic infrastructures and welfare system of rural areas which has narrowed down the gap between the city and the countryside. Over 95% of administrative villages (including in mountains, plateaus, and deserts) have electricity, roads, telephones, internet, and tap water; over 95% of rural families enjoy basic social security, free education, and cooperative medical services. Many peasants refuse to become city folk if asked to give up their rural household registration.
The new rural reconstruction movement has attracted different sectors of society. Roughly speaking, experiments of organic agricultural cooperatives and peasant economic activities, combined with ecotourism, education and cultural programs, have obtained billions of RMB from the government and enterprises. Approximately, the CSA movement has generated a total of income of RMB 500 million, with an annual increase rate of 10%; organic food markets, community consumption, and fair trades generate RMB 15 million; the implementation of internet mode can generate about RMB 100 million. Moreover, rural mutual-aid finance projects can generate a total of RMB 150 million.
Little Donkey Farm has also advocated ecological architecture and protection of old villages, recycling materials, Loving Home Village campaigns, rural–urban cultural exchanges, and peasant workers’ education programs which have attracted government purchase services and different sources of funding, with a total of over RMB 100 million. These activities help peasants, peasant workers, and consumers save money of about RMB 100 million.
Ecological agriculture and ecologically constructed communities provide valuable starting points of reference for grappling with these issues. Currently, Little Donkey Farm utilizes organic production and marketing techniques through research and development to support ongoing environmental protection. The farm also acts as a place for community involvement through visits or public land rentals, ecological agriculture demonstrations, training and education, technology research and development, as well as theoretical research and policy advocacy to continue the exploration of rural and urban China’s road to sustainability.
Liang Shuming Rural Reconstruction Centre
Established in 2004, LRRC is a social network of university student associations, peasant cooperatives, and youth groups. LRRC is an affiliate of the Rural Reconstruction Centre under Renmin University of China. It was originally recognized as the Rural Research Division of the China Reform Magazine established by the Economic Reform Commission of the State Council of China.
Based on Liang Shuming and other pioneers’ rural reconstruction theory, LRRC adopts new innovative approaches such as pilot experiments on agro-ecology, action research on sustainable livelihood, and alternative educational programs for university students, in order to promote peasant cooperatives, facilitate mutual support between the city and the countryside, and explore progressive pedagogy.
In the past 20 years, LRRC has engaged in social and cultural transformation and set up more than 70 new rural construction experiment sites all over China. It has established partnerships with over 200 university student associations, by which thousands of university students have voluntarily participated in agricultural research and activities covering 27 provinces in China. In 2006, LRRC set up Ground Green Alliance which is composed of peasant cooperatives from Shanxi, Shandong, Hebei, Henan, and Hubei provinces. It aims to promote peasant cooperatives, sustainable agriculture, and fair trade. In 2008, the New Youth’s Green Commune was founded. It is a platform for the youth to learn from rural communities and explore the possibilities of sustainable livelihood in rural areas.
LRRC has helped register over 100 organizations (NGOs, enterprises, and cooperatives) that have led to development of hundreds of organizations. They become the pillars of rural–urban community building, provide services for grassroots people, help marginal groups to self-organize, and support women and the elderly to be empowered.
LRRC has organized many youth training programs for social and ecological sustainability. The center has organized tremendous youth programs for rural reconstruction, seminars and workshops, and conferences on cooperatives, farm management, development theories, and social and agricultural movements. The number of university student associations supporting the countryside is in hundreds. Over 20,000 young people have received training. Over 100 academics and intellectuals have received grants to conduct research on experiments of rural reconstruction and produced hundreds of articles and dozens of books.
These different experiments initiated by Little Donkey Farm and LRRC are based on the following perspective: with the advent of capitalist modernization and developmentalism, raw money power has caused the gradual deterioration of rural society and communal relations. The solution usually adopted by the government or village committee is one that revolves around the increase of financial investment. Hence, cash investment and profit-sharing are typical measures. But human relations to the land and the community, largely damaged by modernization, are yet to be addressed. In other words, the ultimate concern must be how to rebuild one’s ties to nature and to others.
Taking a subaltern perspective, we encounter social alienation among the Chinese people and ecological disasters in China. We propose that ecology takes precedence over economy, agriculture over industry and finance, and life over money and profit. Recently, through the Loving Home Village campaigns, we have identified and recognized many grassroots initiatives for pathways to social and ecological transition. The stories of Yun Jianli and Yang Zhengxi will be used as further examples of how they have devoted themselves to mobilize both urban and rural communities to participate in social and ecological transformation.
Yun Jianli: Voluntarism to Decontaminate the Han River
In the spring of 2000, Yun Jianli, a former high school teacher, was shocked to see that there was an outfall along the Han River in Hubei Province, and the gray–black sewage was discharged directly into it. However, her friend commented that it was not too bad when compared to the truly dirty Zaoyang rolling river. In order to verify the fact, Yun organized a field trip. She was absolutely stunned when she saw that the water in the river was terribly smelly, colored like soy sauce, and running with foam. She thought: “this filthy dirty water mixed with the Han River directly destroys the water quality, and would it not damage Xiangfan City people’s health in the long run? If we did not stop it, how could we face our future generations?”
Rapid industrialization and urbanization for decades have led to worsening pollution. The Environmental Protection Law was formally promulgated in China in late 1989 after it was introduced on a “trial” basis in 1979. These laws tended to be vague in their definitions and provisions and were often ignored. Penalties stated in the laws were criticized as being too lenient to effectively enforce pollution control. Many low-technology and high-waste-producing factories moved to China because of its low penalties on environmental pollution (Hui et al., 1997, pp. 33–34).
In the 1990s, two decades into the Reform period, with local small and medium enterprises encouraged to take up production offering employment and the bases for China’s light industries to take off, pollution was acute. The consequence was that over half of China’s rivers were polluted. In the seven major rivers, over 80% of water was polluted. In Beijing, over 70% of its rivers and tributaries were polluted. Industrial waste, sewage, and used water from irrigation were the main sources of water pollution in China. The main rivers and their tributaries were estimated to be receiving about 70% of China’s wastewater, with 41% received by the Yangtze River alone. An official survey in 1990 showed that 65 out of the 94 rivers investigated were polluted to different extents. An estimate was that 45,000 metric tons of wastewater was poured into rivers and lakes every year, of which only about 30% was treated. Even so, over 40% of the treatment was below standard. In Guangdong province, of 47% major cities, 43% had their underground water polluted. About 70% wastewater was industrial waste. China produced more wastewater per unit of product than other industrialized countries. Small lakes near large industrial areas were particularly polluted. An example was a lake in Hubei province was found to contain 1670 tons of wastewater per 100,000 cubic meters (Hui et al., 1997).
According to the latest statistics, in 2020, the combined proportion of state-controlled water sections with good-quality surface water increased to 83.4% (against a target of 70%). The proportion of water sections with bad-quality surface water below Grade V decreased to 0.6% (against a target of 5%) (PRC, 2021). Threatened by polluted water and environmental degradation, local people like Yun had taken initiatives to deal with the urgency of survival through voluntarism and rural–urban community mobilization.
In 2002, Yun turned 69 years old and experienced a turning point in her life. She founded Green Han River, an environmental protection organization, to tackle water pollution in her hometown. She has put tremendous efforts into raising public awareness and concern in Xiangfan City. As a result, the water quality of the Han River, which is the source of China’s South–North Water Diversion project, has improved.
When she first began her engagement with the green movement, people’s awareness of environmental issues was minimal. Many people failed to understand her; others thought she was insane. Governmental officials thought she was too nosy, while factory owners were hostile. Yun visited villages, factories, and mountain areas along the Han River to investigate into sources of pollution. She wrote over one hundred investigation reports and proposals, such as “Han River Xiangfan Water Pollution Investigation Report,” “Domestic Sewage Treatment is Urgent,” “Air Quality in Urban Areas is Worrying,” “Don’t Turn Industrial Parks into Pollution Sources,” “Regulate Ginger Processing Enterprises as Soon as Possible to Prevent Another Major Source of Pollution Spreading,” among others.
The association currently has 81 organizational members, 180 members, and more than 30,000 volunteers. Among them are former officials, retired teachers, senior engineers, bureaucrats, private entrepreneurs, and journalists. The volunteer team became larger and larger, with members’ age ranging from kindergarten age to over 80. Among the volunteer team members, work is self-financed. For example, in 2006, in order to contribute to the safe drinking water project for Zhaiwan villagers along the Tangbai River, the team went to the village more than 40 times, bringing their own food and spending the night in a tent, without adding any burden to the villagers. They always stay at the cheapest hotels in urban areas. They uphold the principle of self-financing but the spirit of mutual help between the city and the countryside.
Green Han River has held 40 free environmental education training courses, in which over 2,000 teachers from over 1,000 schools and units and environmental volunteers from various fronts have participated. Environmental education has been introduced on campus, in rural areas, in institutions, and in communities and enterprises almost a thousand times, with face-to-face presentations and photo exhibitions to more than 530,000 people. By 2018, they had organized over 1,000 field trips to investigate pollution sources along the Han River and its tributaries, traveling more than 100,000 km.
People name her “Sister Yun of Environmental Protection” and children call her “Environmental Protection Granny.” “Granny” is a name paying tribute to her caring motherhood taking care of nature as well as next generations. She envisions a future:
to protect a river is a huge project, relying only on the power of environmental protection volunteers is not enough, we cannot stay to monitor the river every day; only by mobilizing the people along the river to protect their own rivers, there is hope; only by mobilizing the whole society to participate, there is hope for the future of the ecological movement.
Her story shows the vitality of local movements that, rather than adopting an antagonistic attitude, they work with government and enterprises, though not always welcomed by interest blocs. She also demonstrates how to educate, persuade, and mobilize the general public, both in rural and urban areas, to identify with the care of “mother river” through volunteer work. This kind of identification and voluntarism shows that ecology takes precedence over economy, and communal well-being takes precedence over money and profit. Yun was an educated youth going to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. Her endeavors of popular mobilization for the common good sustain the legacies of intellectuals working together with peasants and workers.
Yang Zhengxi: Keeping Seeds and Cattles Alive 5
In the Spring Festival of 2015, Premier Li Keqiang visited Guizhou province and found that there was so-called You Niu Rice in the market. He curiously asked why it was named “You Niu (literally meaning ‘having cattle’) Rice.” Yang Zhengxi replied, “we grow rice by cattle, which is more powerful than any organic stuff, so it is called You Niu Rice.” From then onwards, Yang Zhengxi was known as “Brother You Niu” (literally meaning “the brother having cattle”).
Yang Zhengxi is a native of Dong ethnic group coming from Yangdong Miaoling Dong Village, Shangchong Township, Liping County, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province, China. Now he is the commissioner of the Science and Technology Service Centre of Liping County. He collects, conserves, and promotes local seeds; integrates traditional animal husbandry into organic agriculture: a vintage of “cattle + fish + duck + rice” farming; produces high-quality named “Shou Nong You Niu” (literally meaning “protecting peasantry and having cattle”) rice; and establishes Guizhou You Niu Vintage Agricultural Cooperative. He has devoted himself to mobilize local peasants to participate in ecological agriculture and to facilitate rural–urban cooperation, amid the problems of the disappearance of old seeds, dominating chemical agriculture, and rural exodus.
Seeds in People’s Hands
According to The World of Organic Agriculture: Statistics and Emerging Trends 2022, the total area dedicated to organic agriculture in Asia was more than 6.1 million hectares in 2020 (Willer et al., 2022). There were nearly 2 million producers, most of whom were in India. The leading countries by area were India (2.7 million hectares) and China (over 2.4 million hectares). However, the organic shares of total agricultural land in China were merely 0.5%. In other words, there is a dominating chemical agriculture. Since 2010, China has the average self-sufficiency rates of rice, wheat, corn, and soybeans in China are 99.3%, 98.4%, 97.4%, and 16.7%, respectively (Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 2022). The seeds of rice and wheat are basically domestic products; however, there is a loss of the varieties of local seeds.
Qiandongnan Miao and Dong ethnicities retain intact traditional farming practices and are the best reserved heritage sites of Chinese farming civilization and the last habitat of many agricultural species. Dong is one of the first minority groups to grow rice, and they are also one of the best-preserved agricultural traditions in Guizhou province. Yangdong Village has around 1,400 households and 5,400 people who come from different ethnic groups such as Dong, Miao, and Han. There is a total area of 37,500 mu, including 6,000 mu of arable land, and 30,000 mu of forest land. The altitude ranges from 400 to 1,200 meters. Villagers grow different kinds of rice at different altitudes. There is the problem of rural flight. The tillers are mainly middle-aged people or the elderly. The young generation goes to the cities to work.
Yang Zhengxi never thought that he would return to his hometown and work together with cattle. When he was a child, he was not good at farm work. In 1990, he entered Guizhou Agricultural College and became the first university student from Yangdong Village. He became a civil servant for many years until a seed changed the trajectory of his life.
In 2011, Yang Zhengxi was a township mayor. He always paid home visits to different villages. One day, a villager served him a bowl of rice wine. He drank it and never forgot it. Next year he went back to the village to discuss a promotion plan of that rice wine. Unfortunately, the rice wine was gone. It was made from high straw small hemp red rice. The yield was not high, but the taste was excellent. Originally an elderly woman grew it, but when she passed away, no one in the village could grow it. Yang felt that it was a great pity for the rapid loss of variety of old seeds.
In 2012, he resigned from his post as secretary of the party committee of Yandong Township and was transferred to the Science and Technology Service Centre of Liping County. His job nature was to collect and conserve traditional grain seeds. As soon as he knew where there were rice seeds, he instantly rushed to get them. He visited the villages one by one, talked to old cadres and the elderly who knew more about old seeds, and asked which families still held some of them. He pointed out that a seed is small but powerful as it is the root of traditional culture. He prioritizes seed preservation, “as long as we can save rare agricultural species, it’s worth more than being a mayor or a general secretary of the party in the town!”
He then set up a seed museum. For the past 10 years, he drove a truck to visit more than 900 villages to collect old seeds. These were not only from Guizhou Province, but also Guangxi, Hunan, and other neighboring provinces. According to the 1982 agricultural survey, there were 178 varieties of rice in Liping County. Yangdong Village used to keep more than 100 kinds of seeds. By the end of 2020, he has collected a total of 591 seeds, including 241 kinds of local traditional crop seeds and 350 kinds of other plants.
Reviving the Beauty of Cattle Plowing
In 2014, he began to mobilize Bazhou Village to engage in the preservation of rice seeds. He selected rouge purple rice as the most suitable seed in local environment. He gave the seeds to peasant households who raise cattle, requiring them to adopt traditional rice farming: cattle + grass + manure + fish + duck + rice, absolutely without using any chemical fertilizers and pesticides. There are many benefits to integrate animal husbandry into traditional organic agriculture. Small terraces in mountainous areas are not suitable for mechanical operation; however, cattle plowing is the most suitable way. More importantly, cattle not only can plow but also take the role of weed killer and organic fertilizer producer. He recognized that “a good ecology of our Yangdong is priceless.”
The rice grown by traditional farming method has a strong fragrance, good taste, and high micronutrient elements. The testing results of pesticide residue and heavy metal are “undetected,” with excellent quality indicators. More than 10 peasant households grew 100 mu of rouge purple rice, with a production of more than 60,000 catties, which was sold out before the Spring Festival, earning more than RMB 700,000.
In 2015, he took the lead in building Guizhou You Niu Vintage Agricultural Cooperative. There are around 1,400 households and around 5,400 people in Yangdong Village take shares in the Cooperative with resources such as arable land, cattle, and cowsheds. A total of 33,500 mu of agricultural and forestry land has been cultivated.
Before the establishment of the Cooperative, he held several villagers’ meetings, village committee’s meetings, and production group meetings, in order to extensively collect villagers’ opinions. Finally, they agreed to sign a covenant, named “Shou Nong You Niu Production Law,” which explicitly states that any use of pesticides and herbicides are not allowed. The requirements are as follows: each member of the community is responsible for planting several old varieties; each old variety of seed is given to multiple members of the community to plant; and all villagers become seed protectors. All agree with the family reputation as a guarantee, and if they violate the law, cattle will be confiscated, and membership will be terminated. In the first year, the members planted more than 2,000 mu of various types of old grain seeds and harvested 1.2 million catties. In 2017, he initiated to construct “Yangdong Organic Township” with the characteristics of “Cattle Ploughing Tribe.”
It has gradually attracted many college students and migrant workers in urban areas to return to their home villages. More and more young people are actively involved in ecological agriculture. The number of cattle has increased from around 100 to more than 1,000. The villagers consider that traditional farming is a relatively hard work, however, it is healthier for themselves, and they can obtain higher returns in the emerging organic food market. For example, a young villager joined the Cooperative and adopted ecological farming. He planted 3 mu of rouge purple rice which was sold for RMB 4 per catty and earned about RMB 10,000. In the past, an ordinary rice could only sell for RMB 1.2 per catty, and the income was only more than RMB 2,000 a year. Moreover, he also raised the fresh and big carp in the paddy field, which can be sold for RMB 25 per catty, higher than the market price.
The Cooperative has built an organic rice processing plant in local village with supporting facilities, installed a production line with an annual output of 5,000 tons of rice and produced and processed more than 10 kinds of organic rice with nutritional functions, such as rouge purple rice, slimy fragrant grain, tall straw mango japonica, among others. In 2019, 1,500 tons of rice were processed, and 625 tons of rice were sold through unified acquisition, processing, and packaging, with a higher market price of RMB 36 per catty. The annual income of the Cooperative reached RMB 22.5 million.
Urban–Rural Cooperation
In the beginning years of the Cooperative, Yang Zhengxi had gone through many difficulties to bridge the gap between the Cooperative and urban consumers’ networks. He took on debt to advance money to pay cooperative members for the 450,000 catties of organic rice. Then he went to the Beijing rice exhibition forum to talk about the loss of old grain seeds; he led the Dong ethnic group to Shenzhen to participate in the food cultural festival; he ran to Shanghai to persuade Liyang Farming and Studying Group to help; he went to Guangzhou, Wuhan, and other cities, to invite urban people to visit their “Cattle Ploughing Tribe.” He even persuaded his wife to sell their house, in order to repay some loans. His wife took out the real estate license and said, “I know the day will come.”
The Cooperative does not apply for any organic certificate, but its products can be sold all over the country at a higher price. Because of the improvement of network infrastructure in rural areas, the story of cattle plowing is spreading quickly through the booming of internet services and social media platforms such as WeChat, Bilibili, and TikTok. Many urban consumers traveled to the village to witness how Shou Nong You Niu Rice is cultivated. This physical encounter not only facilitates fair trade of organic food but also ecological tourism. Nowadays, during the spring season, every family plow rice fields, forming a spectacular scene of “a thousand cattle ploughing together” in the colorful terraces, just like an ancient farming scroll, which brings many Chinese and foreign tourists to the village. Cattle plowing and staying in cattle sheds become the new highlights of rural ecological tourism. Currently, there are 36 cattle shed inns and 2 tourist service centers. In other words, the Cooperative controls the production, manufacturing, and distribution of organic rice, and even the value-added tourism.
In addition, with the regeneration of cattle plowing, a local ritual of “Help and Carry” becomes popular again. It symbolizes the interconnectedness of traditional agriculture, animal husbandry, physical labor, social gathering, love, and marriage. Before the spring plowing starts, a young woman asks a man she loves to come to her house to help and carry the manure to the paddy fields. In the process, the man will meet different kinds of challenges from the woman’s family.
From 2017 to 2019, Yangdong Village has received 22,000 tourists, earned RMB 32.6 million of income from agricultural products and tourism, and RMB 1.8 million of dividends from members of the community, with a total income of more than RMB 18 million. In 2020, the total income from agricultural products operated by the “Cattle Ploughing Tribe” was RMB 47 million, and the average household income was more than RMB 20,000.
In 2018, Yangdong Cattle Ploughing Tribe ecological agriculture was listed in the Guizhou Provincial Agricultural Park. In 2019, Yang Zhengxi won the “National May Day Labour Medal.” He was interviewed several times to talk about his experiences in the China Central Television programs.
Yang’s story shows that peasant agriculture is an important way of repairing human relations to Mother Earth. Currently, the food system of the world is mainly controlled by the capitalist transnational agribusiness, which makes huge profits through GMO seeds and mechanized and chemical monoculture. Countering this trend, peasant agriculture and small peasantry practicing organic farming and having local knowledge should be protected and promoted. In this way, organic food products can be one of the foundations of rural–urban solidarity. At the same time, communal capacity should be activated in terms of the utilization of common resources and participation in the problem-solving process. This requires cooperation between grassroots people and intellectuals.
Concluding Remarks
We have witnessed many grassroots people mobilize their communities to tackle ecological degradation and strive for self-sufficiency with dignity. As organic intellectuals, we work to make these efforts not only be heard and visible but also to help connect them with each other.
There are always local initiatives showing possibilities for the collective use of resources and people’s voluntary participation in social life. They result from people’s efforts to find solutions to problems created by the imposition of directives and organization from above according to objectives of modernization in competition with the West. These local initiatives contain elements of the traditions of rural communities. It is these elements, rooted in people’s knowledge and practice, which can constitute the resistance to becoming completely engulfed by globalization. They can lead to openings for alternatives by engaging with everyday life, reviving such elements in different contexts. This makes the innovative moves of the people neither traditional nor modern, but contemporary—that means we must learn how to grasp the spontaneity and creativity of people’s resistances. People think on their own feet, grasping the very situations in which they are thrown and coming up with answers to the very reality posed to them.
The feeling of solidarity that arises from participation in collective activities rooted in daily practices can be life-transforming, embodying Marx’s conception of revolutionary practice as a conjuncture of social change and self-change. By devoting labor to social redistribution rather than capitalist accumulation, peasants take pleasure in helping others as they gain others’ respect for their contributions. Working for others through socialized labor may mistakenly be regarded as a residual practice in a rural society, but it can be seen as radical practice in the face of the forces of globalization and the hegemonic mentality of individualism. Building a culture of collectivity through daily practices of voluntary labor and redistribution of profits is a profound mode of being that counters the violence of capitalist economic endeavors.
To mitigate the adverse effects of globalization with capital flow and labor migration, we must return to localization, re-communalization, and re-ruralization. The alternative path goes for small peasantry, ecological agriculture, self-sufficiency, and community regeneration.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
This article is supported by Innovation Research 2035 Pilot Plan of Southwest University (SWUPilotPlan029).