Theorizing socio-environmental reproduction in China’s countryside and beyond

Abstract

Over the past four decades, pollution and other forms of environmental degradation have radically transformed China’s landscape. So have the ambitious greening policies implemented to tackle these problems. During the same period, an enormous gap in wealth and amenities has arisen between the modernizing cities and rural areas, the latter playing an important, and often ignored, role in China’s environmental project. This paper identifies two paradoxical processes transforming rural environments: the mobilization of rural efforts to green the nation and the ruralization of pollution. While seemingly contradictory, both processes illustrate how the rural is expendable and malleable to state interests. This article proposes the concept of socio-environmental reproduction to theorize the environmental paradox in which many rural communities find themselves in contemporary China, as their environmental work and sacrifices sustain economic and political systems. This concept builds on the work on social reproduction by feminist scholars, particularly those who have sought to integrate the environment into their analyses. This paper proposes to expand the concept to include all the environmental work and sacrifices that certain people are asked to make to fuel the economic system, preserve political stability, and protect privileged spaces from pollution. As a whole, this article shows how China’s rural–urban divide is constitutive of the country’s environmental project and how national greening initiatives enable uneven development. Furthermore, this case foreshadows what will likely occur elsewhere as countries seek to green themselves. As the ecological era unfolds in China and elsewhere, it exposes how deep social divides are mobilized to fulfill environmental objectives. This paper theorizes the environmental work and sacrifices that risk falling on the shoulders of the most vulnerable.