Borrowing from the Rural to Help the Urban: Organic Farming Exemplars in Postsocialist China

Abstract

This article examines an alternative food movement in China called exemplary agriculture. A key characteristic of the movement is its recuperation of legacies of state socialism including exemplary morality (leadership by example and the emulation of role models) and the pervasive urban/rural dichotomy (a dichotomy that privileges the urban over the rural economically, politically and culturally). Adopting practices derived from rural culture and putting a positive spin on them, movement protagonists promote alternative urban lifestyles they believe will improve the experience of city living and the malice of modernity. Drawing on ethnographic research across organic farms and farmers’ markets, this article examines some of the tensions revealed when these legacies of socialism interact with processes of globalisation such as consumer culture. It offers insights into the changing nature of activism in postsocialist China and how new economic classes are attempting to reconfigure the cultural and moral landscape of the city.

Keywords:

• Organic Agriculture
• Consumer Culture
• Exemplary Morality
• Urban/Rural Relations
• Postsocialist China

Acknowledgments

Research for this article was conducted as part of a PhD research project at the Australian National University. I acknowledge the generous support of Professor Andrew Kipnis, Associate Professor Assa Doron and Associate Professor Simone Dennis throughout. I am also grateful for the advice of Dr Michael Griffiths in Shanghai and the detailed insights of two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1 Lei Feng (雷锋) is perhaps the most well-known model promoted by the CCP. Lei was a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army who was killed in an accident in 1962 at the age of twenty-two. Mao Zedong launched the first ‘Learn from Lei Feng’ campaign in 1963 following the discovery of his diary, inside which Lei recorded many thoughts illustrating his sense of duty to and belief in the socialist cause (see Funari & Mees (2013) for a discussion of CCP exemplary models and socialist emulation).

2 From 2002 until 2015, I lived and worked across various major cities in Greater China, helping Chinese and international companies understand and market their products to Chinese consumers.

3 Melamine is a resin commonly used to manufacture plastics. It is illegally added to food products to increase their apparent protein content.

4 The one exception was born with a rural household registration and currently holds a county one (that is, he too has ‘moved up’ in hukou value).

5 Given exemplary agriculturalists in this group live on their farms most of the time, they are more willing to receive volunteers and visitors. As such, the farms I spent most time on and the examples I draw upon in this article come from this group. The names of people and farms in this article are all pseudonyms, while actual names of farmers’ markets in Shanghai are used.

6 This is an arrangement known as tegong (literally ‘special-supply’, short for tegong nongchang, or ‘special-supply farm’). Tegong farms are a legacy of the Mao era; many still exist in the twenty-first century and supply senior leaders of the CCP.

7 Three other exemplary agriculturalists partner with rural residents. But their partnerships do not include the sharing of financial responsibilities or revenues; they are more a case of requiring a rural resident to oversee the farm’s operations. Liu San, Jiang Shifu and Chuantong Farm are therefore unique.