Empty institutions, non-credibility and pastoralism: China’s grazing ban, mining and ethnicity

Abstract

When institutional function is disregarded in property rights reforms, there may be two outcomes. One, the new institution grows detached from actors’ praxis and evolves into an ‘empty institution’, allowing those governing to enforce without enforcing, while those governed can continue what they did. Two, the institution evolves into a ‘non-credible’ institution, which may collapse or change due to rising conflict. The concepts are applied to China’s Grazing Ban, a profound measure to regulate the nation’s largest land resource: grassland. A survey and interviews in 11 villages in Northwest China demonstrate that most herders feel that a ban is not appropriate for conservation. Over half perceive negative ecological change, while there are complaints over adverse income effects. More than one-third admit to illegal (night-time) grazing, leading to conflicts between enforcers and herders. The ban’s lack of credibility may be attributed to its disregard of the function of land for social welfare. Through an institutional analysis of grassland reforms, it is demonstrated that the state's reasons to keep imposing the ban are as much driven by ecological conservation as by the need to ascertain control over a vast frontier endowed with mineral reserves and inhabited by ethnic minorities.

Keywords:

• rangeland and natural resource management
• payment for ecosystem and environmental services
• nomadism
• non-state social welfare
• credibility

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express his gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers of this journal, as well as to Irene Bain, Gao Guiying, Danielle Hooijmans, Karlis Rokpelnis, Emily Yeh and Qiaoli Zhang.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Grassland is the world’s most common vegetation type, covering approximately one-fifth of the earth’s land mass (Scurlock and Hall 1998, 229). The countries with the largest area of grassland are, respectively, Australia, Russia and China, with an estimated 6–8 percent of the world’s total area located on the Chinese mainland (World Bank 2011; Ni 2002).

2 These are the autonomous regions of Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Tibet and Ningxia, and the provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu and Heilongjiang. This distribution does not fully concur with the distribution at a lower level of administration. At the county level, 264 counties (excluding city districts at the same administrative level) were categorized in 2006 as pastoral (120) and semi-pastoral (144). Together, these represent approximately 60 percent of all grassland areas. The population living in these counties is relatively small, and is estimated at around 3.5 percent (44 million) of China’s total population of 1.33 billion (Song 2006, 17).

3 This process of detachment has – in organization sociology – been described as the ‘decoupling’ of daily human activities from institutions. In Meyer and Rowan’s (1977, 357) wording: ‘Because attempts to control and coordinate activities in institutionalized organizations lead to conflicts and loss of legitimacy, elements of structure are decoupled from activities and from each other  …  decoupling enables organizations to maintain standardized, legitimating, formal structures while their activities vary in response to practical considerations’.

4 In this regard, the discussion is also related to the neo-classically inspired notion of ‘functional equivalents’ in which alternative institutional arrangements replace formal institutions in industrialized and developed market economies (Rodrik 2007).

5 Note that in Ho (2005b), the conceptual differences between the empty versus the non-credible institution were not as distinctly defined as here. For this reason, the non-credible institution is separately discussed and defined here.

6 As, for instance, Kuran (2012, 1086) maintains in the case of Islamic institutions.

7 In this regard, the paper by Zhao and Rokpelnis (2016) elsewhere in this volume also points to the need to pay more attention to local knowledge.

8 The endogeneity of human action is here demonstrated by focusing on the pastoral sector. However, it can be as easily ascertained in, for instance, the impossibility of ‘leapfrogging’ the dirty stages of development. See (Ho 2005a).

9 As grassland includes other vegetation types, the more neutral term ‘rangeland’ or ‘range’ is also sometimes used. Other synonyms or overlapping terms include but are not limited to prairie, pasture, savanna, woodland and shrubland. However, in this monograph, we will adhere to ‘grassland’, as the term caoyuan (literally ‘grass plains’) is commonly used in China.

10 Coupled to this is the claim that pastoralism is economically inefficient and in need of modernization. A description of the history of the perception and politics on pastoralism as a ‘backward’ system in order to legitimize its ‘modernization’ is provided in Ho and Azadi (2010, 303).

11 A typical case in this regard is the decades-long grassland dispute over the boundaries between Ejin Banner of Inner Mongolia and Jinta County of Gansu Province. See also Ji (2015).

12 The lease period is stipulated in article 20 of the 2002 Rural Land Contracting Law.

13 The Grassland Law was originally proclaimed in 1985. It was revised (xiuding, i.e. replaced by a new version) during the 31^st Meeting of the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People’s Congress on 28 December 2002. It was amended (xiugai, i.e. content partially changed or added) for the first time in accordance with the Decision of the Tenth Session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People's Congress on 27 August 2009, and amended for the second time at the Third Session of the Standing Committee of the Twelfth National People’s Congress on 29 June 2013.

14 It should be noted that at the national level there is confusion about the legal status of the lessor (as the owner of grassland), as well as the lessee (as the user of grassland). Regarding the former, the issue revolves around the legal representative of grassland ownership – the state or the collective (Ho 2000a). Regarding the latter, some national laws and regulations mention that grassland can be leased to individuals as well as collectives (Article 13, 2013 Grassland Law; and Article 15, 2004 Land Administration Law). In contrast, the 2002 Rural Contracting Law (Article 15) and the 2007 Property Law (Article 124) state that land (including grassland) should be contracted out to individual households (‘nongcun jiti jingji zuzhi shixing jiating chengbao jingying wei jichu’).

15 The strategic significance of the pastoral region as China’s frontier can be dated back over 2000 years to when the Western Han imperial state engaged in agricultural reclamation by the military or tunken (Ho 2000c). Xinjiang is mostly known for its bingtuan or military farms, but they can also be found in other pastoral regions, such as Heilongjiang and Qinghai.

16 Strictly speaking, the sedentarization of nomadic herders can be seen as a part of ecological resettlement, as the latter not only pertains to pastoralists and ethnic minorities, but can also involve sedentary farmers, as well as Han Chinese.

17 The Grazing Ban continues to speak to popular imagination, as evidenced by media reports that ‘China banned grazing on nearly 90 million hectares’ and ‘forbade 30 million livestock from roaming on grasslands’ (Reuters 2007, 1).

18 The name banner or qi is generally used in Inner Mongolia, and is equal to a county.

19 This program aims to convert cropland vulnerable to soil erosion (such as sloping and arid lands) into forestland. It was started in 1999; see also e.g. Zhou, Zhao, and Zhu (2012).

20 In the same ministerial notice, seeding of grass was included as an additional measure for areas under the Grazing Ban.

21 Moreover, there is also confusion over the English translation of the term jinmu. For instance, while Waldron, Brown, and Longworth (2010) mention that Yeh (2005) focuses on grazing bans, she is actually talking about the tuimu huancao program, translated by her as ‘converting pastures to grassland’, and translated by Waldron et al. as the ‘reduce livestock/grazing return grasslands program’. Nakawo et al. (2010) translate jinmu as ‘banning of grazing’, while they do not mention tuimu huancao, but only tuigeng huanlin(cao) and tuimu huanlin, respectively translated as ‘conversion of farmland to forest/grassland’ and ‘conversion of stock farming to forest’.

22 The rates for subsidy for the grazing ban and other areas were determined in a notice by the State Council (2011, 4) proclaimed on 1 June 2011.

23 In 2010, the central state called upon the local governments of Inner Mongolia, Sichuan, Yunnan, Tibet, Gansu, Ningxia, Xinjiang and Qinghai to determine the zones in which the Grazing Ban should be applied (Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Agriculture 2010). One year later, in 2011, it was determined that under the tuimu huancao program no more new Grazing Ban zones would be established (National Development and Reform Commission et al. 2011).

24 Problems of enforcement and income are discussed next to issues of identity, ethnicity and culture. Some asked for incidental advice, such as the online question by Gezi (2012): ‘Are there any standards for the penalties under this grazing ban? Some bastard officials (gouguan) use the Grazing Ban as an excuse to indiscriminately impose fines. Hopefully someone knowledgeable could kindly reply, it isn’t easy to be a peasant!’ Others are active as bloggers, such as Jorilt (2013) and Changsheng Tian de Enci (2013). The latter stated: ‘The Grazing Ban is simply an awfully bad pretext (chaolan de liyou) to prevent grassland degradation’, and his blogs have attracted some interesting reactions. His homepage mentions he is a male of Mongolian descent and lives in Hailar, Hulunbei’er. He studied at the Ke’erqin Vocational Arts School. His biography reads: ‘20 years at the grasslands, after that is something I don’t want to talk about’.

25 An exception might be the studies by Dong et al. (2007) and Chen (2007), which are more positive. Dong et al. showed that the Grazing Ban is widely implemented, but also signaled that high input costs were the most serious problem in stall-feeding. According to them, incentives need to be given for sustainable implementation of the Grazing Ban. The latter study, by Chen, does not provide a systematic presentation of materials, methods and results, and appears to be more a government report. In relation to PES, the Grazing Ban only found justification in the eyes of a limited group of scholars. Hou, Li, and Ying (2008) argued that market approaches such as PES are an important means for grassland management, whereas Yu and Wang (2011) – based on a case study in Yanchi County (Ningxia) – concluded that creating appropriate conditions for the transfer (and, thus, marketization) of grassland rights is important to raise farmers’ income.

26 Shi et al. (2007) found that the output of high quality forage (mostly grass species) was more than half lower (351.24 g/m²) in the area under the Grazing Ban versus the freely grazed area (721.72 g/m²). They also found that the number of species (27) in the enclosed grassland was lower than in the grazed one (34), which led to the hypothesis that dominant species more easily get the upper hand in an enclosed environment as these are no longer controlled through grazing. The article contains a good review of the international literature in explanation of their findings. Wang et al. (1997) conducted one of the few long-term studies (1983–1994) on the effects of the Grazing Ban, and found that after 10 years the vegetation in the enclosed area still had not recovered (in a Clementsian interpretation). In this regard, Shi et al. (2007) made the important observation that time is crucial in assessing ecological change and recovery.

27 In an interview by Wang (2010), Yu Changqing, director of the Ecological Protection Centre of Tsinghua University, maintained that grassland policies, including the Grazing Ban, should not be implemented in a ‘one-size-fits-all’ fashion (yi dao qie). Wang Xiaoyi, director of the Centre for Research on Rural Environment and Society of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, blamed a blind focus on project acquisition from central funding by local governments (xiangmu zhuyi) for the standardized, top-down manner of grassland policies.

28 Wang stated that in Inner Mongolia there is a silent understanding (moqi) between township cadres and herders that they would only occasionally check on clandestine grazing, for instance during inspections by higher level administration. However, in return for not being investigated, local cadres would ask as much as 10 RMB per sheep from herders (‘mei zhi yang … jiao 10 kuai qian, xiang zhengfu jiu bu zai zhuijiu ni de wenti’ (official cited in Wang 2010).

29 For instance, a rural survey of 52 farm households in nine natural villages in Yanchi county (Ningxia) by Fan, Zhou, and Ma (2005) found that over 90 percent of the respondents maintained grazing in defiance of the Grazing Ban. A similar situation was reported for the (semi-)arid pastures in Inner Mongolia, by Yu and Xu (2010, 78).

30 In China’s administrative system, the autonomous regions (zizhiqu) were established as a way to recognize and co-opt ethnic diversity. The autonomous region has provincial-level status, and in principle enjoys certain rights of autonomous governance as stipulated in the Constitution and the Law on Regional Autonomy. However, the actual level of autonomy has been disputed (Stein 2003). The Muslim Hui population constitutes 34.63 percent of Ningxia’s population, while 64.72 percent is Han (Ningxia Bureau of Statistics 2013, 4.3).

31 It measures 456 km from north to south, and 250 km from east to west, and has a total land surface of 66,400 km². Earlier surveys found the actual surface to be considerably smaller, namely 51,800 km² (Zhongguo Ziran Ziyuan Congshu Bianyi Weiyuanhui 1995, 1). This lower figure was due to widespread under-reporting of (agricultural) land during the 1980s and 1990s (Ho 2005, 8).

32 Mu is a Chinese unit of measurement used. One mu is equal to 1/15 hectare.

33 According to the Ningxia Bureau of Statistics (1991–2011, 1.2, 1.4) the amount of grassland was stable over 1990–2000: 39 million mu. From 2000 onward, the area declined annually to 33.85 million mu in 2010.

34 The autonomous region’s rural net income per capita was 79.0 percent of the national average (4674.89 versus 5915.01 RMB in 2010), and just 35.3 percent of the Beijing rural net income (13,262.29). Nationally, it ranked ninth lowest, with Gansu as the minimum (3,424.65 RMB; see (National Bureau of Statistics 2011a, 10.21).

35 Over 1958–1990, the proportion of agricultural population dropped from 87.8 percent to 76.1 percent (Ningxia Bureau of Statistics 2013, 4.2).

36 At the time of writing this percentage had decreased to 46.4 percent (Ningxia Bureau of Statistics 2015).

37 Ningxia has a total of 4.73 million sheep and goats, of which 19.06 percent are located in Yanchi, 11.80 percent in Tongxin, and 5.09 percent in Yuanzhou. Yanchi and Tongxin have the largest number of sheep in the region (Ningxia Bureau of Statistics 2013, 11.20). As early as the Western Han dynasty (221–206 BC), up to the early Qing dynasty (1648–1911), Ningxia was also known for horse-breeding under the auspices of the Imperial Stud (Ho 2000c, 351–52).

38 The percentages of respondents who identify themselves as farmer are, respectively, 93.9 (Yanchi), 86.8 (Tongxin) and 82.4 (Yuanzhou). Compare this to minorities, such as Kazakh, Uyghur and Mongol, which have a strong linkage between ethnic and economic (herder) identity. An online post by Todhon (2013) might demonstrate this: ‘The Grazing Ban and settling (of nomads) has helped human development, but has also caused the people of the grasslands to lose their roots (sangshi caoyuanren de genben). It is hoped that herders, who have been settled and banned from the grasslands, will at any time [continue to] wear their traditional Mongol dresses and speak Mongolian’. However, it should be recognized that Hui, although recognized as a minority are, in fact, ethnically difficult to distinguish from Han Chinese, apart from adhering to a different religion (see also Gladney 2004). It is why one might wonder why, for example, Hakka are not regarded as an ethnic minority in mainland China even though they have distinct cultural and linguistic features from surrounding populations.

39 Each interview lasted at least an hour. To protect interviewees’ privacy, no names have been provided here.

40 Before 2002, Yuanzhou District was known as Guyuan Prefecture, with jurisdiction over six counties: Guyuan, Pengyang, Xiji, Haiyuan, Longde and Jingyuan. The 11 natural villages are, respectively, located in Huamachi Township, Wanglejing Township, Dashuikeng Township, Fengjigou Township, Xiamaguan Township and Guanting Township. In some cases, research in originally selected villages was not possible, and alternative villages representing similar features were selected.

41 The level of no education according to the 2010 Sixth National Census was 8.93 percent, and the level of illiteracy (defined as the population above 15 years of age that cannot read or write) was 4.08 percent (National Bureau of Statistics 2011b). The level of those without education stands out in Yuanzhou (47.1 percent), as compared to Yanchi (30.6 percent) and Tongxin (17.0 percent).

42 The national average household size is 3.10 (National Bureau of Statistics 2011a), and 3.24 for the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (Ningxia Bureau of Statistics 2013, 4.1).

43 Net income for rural households for the three survey areas is respectively 3669 (Yanchi), 3421 (Tongxin), and 3546 RMB (Yuanzhou, see Ningxia Bureau of Statistics 2013, 10.19).

44 The survey also asked about other livestock, such as pigs, donkeys and mules. However, as these animals are not grazed on the grasslands, the data are not presented here.

45 Percentages for medical insurance were 100 percent (Tongxin and Yuanzhou), and 98.6 percent (Yanchi). The mean annual payment for the medical insurance was 35.3 (Yanchi), 30.0 (Yuanzhou) and 27.5 RMB (Tongxin). The percentages that had a pension were 93.9 (Yanchi), 64.7 percent (Yuanzhou) and 56.6 percent (Tongxin). The mean annual payment was 129.0 (Yanchi), 5688.9 (Tongxin) and 115.6 (Yuanzhou).

46 This is despite claims to the contrary, asserting that Ningxia was the first to adopt provincial-level regulations on the Grazing Ban (e.g. Legal Daily 2011). In fact, the first provincial rules (adopted by a People’s Congress) were adopted four years earlier by Shaanxi in 2007. These were followed by Shanxi (2008), Liaoning (2009), Ningxia (2011), Xinjiang (2012) and Gansu (2013). Sichuan had only proclaimed provisional rules on implementation (2012); Inner Mongolia proclaimed only regulations by the Regional Bureau of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry; while Jilin had sent its rules for review to the provincial People’s Congress (December 2012). Regional and provincial rules for Tibet and Qinghai have not been proclaimed up to the end of 2013.

47 Divided over the three research sites, the respective percentages to this question are: 66.7 percent in Yuanzhou (n = 51); 56.5 percent in Yanchi (n = 145); and 32.1 percent in Tongxin (n = 53). The exception – although still relatively high – is, thus, Tongxin.

48 The percentages that do not see a decrease in annual grasses, or that do not know, are, respectively, 39.4 percent and eight percent; while the percentages that see a rise in biennial/perennial plants or that do not know are 36.1 percent and 6.1 percent.

49 Percentages that replied yes or were missing are, respectively, for Yanchi (7.6 percent yes; 2.1 percent missing); Tongxin (28.3; 0.0) and Yuanzhou (11.8; 2.0).

50 Including the reply: ‘Yes, but I let my livestock graze during the night’.

51 The percentages that agreed or did not answer are, respectively, 13.8/2.1 (Yanchi), 30.1/0 (Tongxin) and 5.9/2.0 (Yuanzhou).

52 Also violent conflicts occur, as shown by the following account: ‘Two days ago [i.e. 4 August 2011, PH], a certain Huang from our village went to the well to water his sheep. On his way back, he got caught and fined.  …  A conflict ensued, and the Grazing Ban staff hit him on the back of his head with an electric baton, grabbed two sheep and left. Until about ten o'clock in the evening his family got anxious, and went out to look for him. They found him, after which he was rushed to the hospital. He only woke up three days later. People from the Grazing Ban team telephoned and notified: “As long as he is alive … quickly and quietly go home, and do not talk any nonsense. You can take the sheep back, and the fine will be exempted”. We all think people of the Grazing Ban Team are social scum (shehui zhazi) hired by the Forestry Bureau; after beating and fining people, they go back and divide the money with the Forestry Bureau’ (daren faqian hou huiqu he linyeju de ren fenhong, oral communication, 2011, 4.2CMA30).

53 Under article 22 of the autonomous region’s rules on the Grazing Ban it is stipulated that apart from warnings, fines between 5 and 30 RMB per sheep may be imposed (Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region People's Congress, 2011). Yet, as the main text shows, interviewees’ responses reveal a widely shared sense that fines are imposed indiscriminately. In another instance, an interviewee stated: ‘The standards for the fines are not the same between the township and the Grazing Ban team. I have no idea how the national policy was determined’ (oral communication, 2011, 4.2CMB30).

54 The percentages of respondents (no missing values) who had been fined are 80.3 percent (Yanchi), 39.2 percent (Yuanzhou) and 37.7 percent (Tongxin). The average fines are 619.3 RMB (Yanchi), 603.4 (Tongxin) and 225.5 (Yuanzhou).

55 See also the follow-up question in Table 2.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Research Council [grant number GA 282690].

Notes on contributors

Peter Ho

Peter Ho is a professor at Minzu University of China and Delft University of Technology. He has published widely in the leading journals of development, planning and environment (H-index: 28). Furthermore, he has published over 10 books with Oxford University Press, Routledge, and Blackwell. Ho has worked extensively on the revision of ‘Western’ theories of development in relation to institutions and property rights. He was named a Fellow in China’s 1000 Talents Program; awarded the Kapp Prize by EAEPE, one of the largest European economics associations; was named a Leading Expert by the China State Ethnic Affairs Commission; and was awarded the Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (www.recoland.eu).