Seeing the Forest for the Village, Nation, and Province: Forestry Policy and Environmental Management in Early-Twentieth-Century Yunnan

Abstract

This article compares village, national, and provincial forestry policy in early-twentieth-century China, with a focus on Yunnan, making three important observations. First, by identifying villages as key arenas for the production of forestry policy, it highlights the importance of rethinking the political geography of forestry policy during this period, to establish a proper comparative baseline for evaluating policy implementation. Second, its comparisons reveal diverging interests in forestry at these three levels, ranging from village reforestation for ecological conservation to provincial afforestation for economic development. Third, it shows that policymakers in these three arenas deployed distinctive cultural and political resources to promote their policies. The localized formats and objectives of village policies may have rendered them relatively invisible to national policymakers, who promoted more general and systematic forestry frameworks as novel interventions into a seemingly neglected policy arena that demanded comprehensive and intensive political intervention.