Reconfiguring Chinese natures: frugality and waste reutilization in Mao era urban China

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article juxtaposes two conflicting images of China’s environment during the socialist Mao era. One is an influential scholarly account of environmental destruction due to Mao’s insistence that “man must conquer nature” (ren ding sheng tian). The other, provided by a longtime resident of Kunming, is an idyllic description of an urban material reuse system without waste. The different images involve variances in the very notions of nature and environment on which they are grounded. The former posits the Chinese tian as equivalent to a western environmentalist notion of nature, while the latter corresponds with a Marxist materialist notion that waste is part of nature’s bounty. I explore the politics of fixing translational equivalents in the interplay between history, memory, and power by focusing on excesses of each image: Mao’s tian as an impediment to cultivating collective agency, and forms of industrial pollution that were not signified by “garbage.” Kunming city government documents further highlight crucial rifts in material flows that unfolded through the Mao era, complicating both images. Ultimately, by probing shifting Chinese “natures,” I clear conceptual space for capturing the important roles played by waste matter and practices of frugality in shaping recent Chinese history.