Sheer Force of Will
JOHN MERRICK: Your 2001 book, Mao’s War Against Nature, is the classic account of the Chinese state’s attempt during the Maoist period to “conquer” nature. What factors produced this policy under Mao, and what effect did it have on the environment in China?[1]
JUDITH SHAPIRO: During the Mao period, nature was constructed as an enemy to be overcome through sheer force of will. Some people trace that way of thinking back to Mao’s background as a military man: the idea that with more people strength is greater, and you always want more people. But it was also, of course, because in a developing country like China, people regularly suffered at the hands of nature. Throughout its history, the country has experienced many devastating floods and droughts.
One problem with the construction of nature as an enemy was that it was in violation of many of China’s deep philosophical traditions. Confucianism, for instance, talks about the harmony between people and the heavens, while Daoism talks about flowing with the way of nature and Buddhism about having reverence for all life.
The book you mentioned, Mao’s War Against Nature, came into being because I had done a lot of work on memoirs of the Cultural Revolution, and through these I’d heard stories about things like the killing of the sparrows—part of the “Four Pests” campaign during the Great Leap Forward[2]—and cutting down forests in order to fuel backyard furnaces so the country could overtake England in industrial production. And I’d also heard the stories about the so-called educated youth being sent to the borderlands to prepare for war with America in south-west China and with Russia along the northern border. These educated youths, at the same time, were told that they were going t conquer nature and conquer themselves. Through all of this, I became interested in this idea of “conquering nature”. These were times of terrible suffering for the Chinese people, and the suffering of nature and of people during the Mao period is clearly linked in an obvious discursive manner.
Some people say that the environmental problems of China became far worse after China adopted capitalism. That is true, certainly during the modernization period after the death of Mao, when China became in essence the manufacturing hub for the entire world. At the time, it enjoyed enormous economic growth and prosperity, but it also suffered great harms, not only environmental but in terms of public health, too. I think what started this, though, was the construction of nature as an enemy to be conquered. Some of these themes in the Mao period carried over into the post-Mao period and had ongoing effects.
To return to the Mao period: the transformations here involved a top-down, James C Scott-type administrative reordering of the state.[3] There was forcible relocation, political repression and a lack of free speech, particularly during the Anti-Rightist campaign [1957–1959]. Then of course the Cultural Revolution made it impossible for scientists and farmers to speak out against policies that were destructive of nature. Nor were they able to achieve the goals that the state set out to achieve.
One of the slogans of this period was “encircling the lakes in order to create farmland”. This was based on the idea that China lacked enough arable land to feed the population. So the government set entire cities to work—everyone had to stop school or come off work to go to lakes and basically throw rocks into them in order to make them smaller and therefore create more land on which to plant. This didn’t work, of course. But it was attempted at Lake Dianchi, near Kunming, for example, and I had a chance to interview people who participated in this.