Abstract
In the era of Anthropocene, we humanists need to interact with social and natural scientists in a joint effort to curtail the rise of technological supremacy derived from Western modernism. In this chapter, I examine the Chinese policy of “cash changeover” (bianxian), that is, using a computation formula to convert local environments into monetary assets and sell a portion of the resources to fund local industrial projects for fast-track revenue. I critique the notion that one can go selling land-based resources as if they were movable items of one’s belonging and consume them at peril, while I strive to reenchant a notion of the traditional Chinese ethics, “human-land affinity” (rendi qihe) so that humans can cohabit the lands with nonhuman life forms in harmony.
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Notes
- 1.
There has been discussion at symposiums and conventions to debate and authorize the adoption of this geological term for over a decade now—it is generally acknowledged that the term “Anthropocene” was coined in 2000 by the astrospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and ecologist Eugene Stoermer. The consensus among the science and humanity circles had been expecting for the term to be formally approved at the 35th International Geological Congress held in August 22–27, 2016, in Cape Town, South Africa. The term “Econocene” was first coined by the Berkeley scholar Richard B. Norgaard, “The Econocene and the California Delta,” 1–5. Additional notation is in order here due to the timing of occurring events centering round the term “Anthropocene.”
- 2.
This mantra was touted by many local leaders as the unchallengeable pretext to design and implement their own lucrative projects that involve large-scale alteration of local landscapes and huge consumption of local natural resources. A good example of that is the case of the damming projects along the Nu River in Yunnan Province in southwest China. Mr. Li Haishu, the Director of the local Forestry Bureau defends his belief with such a mantra on camera when he is interviewed. The case will be discussed below.
- 3.
Yan Fu is arguably the first Chinese writer to work on an integrated model of science and ethical wellbeing in his translation of both Thomas Huxley and Herbert Spencer (ca. 1895), which “transvaluates” Spencer’s social Darwinian notion so as to render it amenable to social progress. For further details, read Chapter 2 of my book, Signposts of Self-Realization: Evolution, Ethics and Sociality in Modern Chinese Literature, 14–27.
- 4.
Foreign Affairs Movement, also known as the Self-Strengthening Movement, lasted from 1861 to 1895. It started off with a court reform to push for modernization of arsenal and ship industries, but gradually expanded its impact on politics, diplomacy and education in late Qing China. For its impact on social thought, readers can refer to Ted Huters’ Bringing the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China.
- 5.
Ma Jianzhong and Qian Xun were contemporaries of Yan Fu, and like him, both traveled to Europe in the late 1890s to study hard sciences, and then were employed as diplomats of the Qing government on account of their classic upbringing and their personal experiences of mastering the basic knowledge of Western sciences. Both became actively involved in the Foreign Affairs Movement and later became leading Encyclopedists who compiled volumes of classified terms and ideas of Western scientific knowhow in 1901 and 1902 respectively.
- 6.
Alison Byerly, “The Uses of Landscape: The Picturesque Aesthetics and the National Park System,” 52–68.
- 7.
Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, ix.
- 8.
Ibid., ix.
- 9.
Ibid., x–xi.
- 10.
Ibid., xii. Emphasis is mine.
- 11.
For a detailed analysis of such essential difference that exists between Chinese and Western subjectivity, read the first section “Some Uncommon Assumptions” in David Hall and Roger Ames, Thinking through Confucius, 11–25.
- 12.
Hu and Wang, The Silent Nu River. Accessed on 1 June 2017 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jet0AdWK4
- 13.
The other two are the Jinsha River which eventually flows east as the Yangtze River and the Lancang River which runs southeast to become the Mekong River. The Tri-River Corridor constitutes a hugely crucial ecosystem not only for China’s southwest but for many southeastern nations such as Myanmar, the Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
- 14.
A number of local leaders adopted this policy of bianxian because it had allegedly been promoted by certain Japanese economists, and they embraced it as an already proven and reliable tactic for local economic planning. A case in point for using such a bianxian idea is explained in note 2 above, in which Mr. Li Haishu, Director of the Forestry Bureau of the Nu Jiang Autonomous Region in Yunnan Province defended his adoption of it as legitimate practice of a theory proposed by a Japanese economist.
- 15.
Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 190.
- 16.
These ethnic minorities, the Nu, the Lisu, the Dulong, are among the many living on the banks of the Nu River.
- 17.
Hu, The Silent Nu.
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
News Probe, Damming the Nu River, the concluding installment, CNTV, 2016. It is important to note that this concluding footage attributes the changed stand as a follow-up act by the Yunnan governor after a recent visit by Xi Jinping, the CCP leader. It is understandable for the TV journalists to abide by political protocols, but I hasten to add that it should not overshadow the crucial role played by the News Probe journalists who had put their feet down on the ground and conducted a series of interviews along one tributary of the Nu River long before the visit of the CCP chief.
Bibliography
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Liu, X. (2019). Land, Technological Triumphalism and Planetary Limits: Revisiting Human-Land Affinity. In: Chang, Cj. (eds) Chinese Environmental Humanities. Chinese Literature and Culture in the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18634-0_9
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