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ABSTRACT
Environmental conflict between indigenous peoples and state agencies developing natural resources has become a global phenomenon. This article presents a compelling but underreported incident of environmental conflict in China. The Tongpo case describes a struggle between a Mongol pastoral people who worship and protect their sacred mountain and a Han Chinese natural resource development company that began constructing a coking mill at the foot of this mountain in late 2005. This paper gives a detailed account of the origins, development, and impact of the Tongpo case from the perspective of indigenous environmental justice. It focuses on two related subjects: how Mongol indigenous institutions in China have protected the environment, and how environmental injustice has occurred at the local level in China. By applying an indigenous environmental justice lens to this case study, this paper exposes how environmental injustice is manifested through internal colonialism, nationalism, and racism and illuminates the ways in which indigenous groups protect their sacred lands.
Acknowledgements
I previously presented versions of this argument at three workshops: the fifteenth workshop of Gendai Chūgoku hō kenkyūkai (Modern Chinese Law Society), September 8, 2006, at Aichi University, Japan; the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies Workshop “Inner Asian Law and Society: Religion and Justice,” November 14, 2014, at Oxford University; and the international workshop “Transformation of Law in the Age of Globalization,” December 14, 2014, at Doshisha University, Japan. I am grateful to the participants of these workshops for their comments and questions. I thank also Petra Mahy, Mateo Taussig-Rubbo, Vesna Wallace, and three anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Khohchahar E. Chuluu is an associate professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo. His research focuses on law and legal history in East Asia and Inner Asia.
Notes
1 In Chinese, Qinghai Qinghua Meihua Youxian Gongsi. It was a branch of the current Qinghai Qinghua Mining Smelting and Coking Group Co. Ltd, whose parent company is based in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China. The Chinese words for what I call the “coking mill” (or coal smelter and refinery mill) in this paper are jiaohua chang (lit. “coking factory”).
2 I happened upon the Tongpo case in the summer of 2006 while conducting fieldwork in this region to explore conflict resolution methods and norms, including village regulations, pastoral land management practices, and pre-1949 judicial cases.
3 I first wrote about this case in an essay written in Japanese (Erdenchuluu Citation2008). This article is a largely revised version of the previous essay and stands as the first study on the Tongpo case in English.
4 Heclo Citation2008, 47.
5 Tamanaha Citation2017, 51–52.
6 Watson Citation2003, 289.
7 Although a Buddhist monastery also exists as an indigenous religious institution in the area, it was not involved in the protests, as these three indigenous institutions were.
8 Aggarwal Citation2008, 21. Such positive and negative characteristics of indigenous institutions can both be observed in the Tongpo case. On indigenous knowledge and resource management, see Berkes Citation1999.
9 Watson Citation2003, 289–290.
10 Ellen, Parkes, and Bicker Citation2000.
11 It is meaningful to record indigenous institutions because they constitute the grounds for indigenous assertions in an environmental conflict that not necessarily known to the outside world. See Povinelli Citation2016.
12 Jarratt-Snider and Nielsen Citation2020.
13 Martinez-Alier Citation2003, 214.
14 Whyte Citation2017. See also Whyte Citation2018.
15 McGregor Citation2018, 286–287.
16 Bye Citation2020.
17 Cervantes Citation2020.
18 Murray Citation2019.
19 For more information about the criminalization of native protests in the USA, see Fang Citation2019.
20 Mah and Wang Citation2017, 264.
21 Mah and Wang Citation2017, 264–267.
22 Liu Citation2012, 234. Jian Citation2005, 277 proposes a holistic definition of environmental justice in Chinese law as “a set of political, social, legal, and policy responses to address the disparate distribution of environmental harms and benefits by groups of environmentally disadvantaged people.”
23 Liu, Liu, and Zhang Citation2014, 8757, 8759.
24 Nyima and Yeh Citation2016, 152, 166–174. For more information about the mining boom on the Tibetan plateau, see Lafitte Citation2013. For an introduction to conflicts in Tibet and Xinjiang, see Hillman Citation2016.
25 Mah and Wang Citation2017, 267.
26 Yeh Citation2013, 1179.
27 Violent pasture conflicts on the Tibetan Plateau in the early 2000s were common, between not only Tibetans and the Mongols, but also among Tibetan groups. For Tibetan cases, see Yeh Citation2003.
28 Qinghai Wangqi Zhi Citation2012, 13.
29 Article 9 of Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committees of the People’s Republic of China (Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Cunmin Weiyuanhui Zuzhi Fa) states: “A villagers committee shall be composed of three to seven members, including the chairman, the vice-chairman (vice-chairmen), and the members.” As for the village regulations, the Chagaangol villagers’ committee issued a written notice to the villagers in April 2004. This regulated pastureland-related matters including limits on the lease of pastureland. This notice was still in effect during my fieldwork in June 2006.
30 For the Janus-faced nature of the villagers’ committee in China’s Tibetan case, see Gaerrang (Kabzung) Citation2015.
31 There are other deities in the region, such as those associated with ovoos. It seems, however, that the Amnye Uishing is the most powerful deity and these other deities do not conflict with each over jurisdiction.
32 It was unclear whether the deity was painted as an addition to the thangka or was created together with the thangka itself.
33 The English name for “mentes” is unknown. Meanwhile, these nine kinds appear to be analogous to (and obviously overlap with) the “nine gems” of Mongolian Buddhist tradition, which are gold, silver, coral, pearls, lapis lazuli, turquoise, steel, copper, and mother-of-pearl. See Liu Citation2003, 611–612.
34 For further information about how Buddhist deities have converged in Mongol pastoral society, see Wallace Citation2015b.
35 These are very common prescriptions with regard to sacred mountains in Mongol-inhabited places, because it is widely accepted that trees, plants, and animals around the mountain belong to its deity.
36 Wallace Citation2015a, 230.
37 Some ovoos were also used for demarcating the boundaries of administrative divisions.
38 This number of participants was reported to me by one of the participants, but this was different from the number shown in the indictment issued by the People’s Prosecutors Department of Ulaan County, where stated there were approximately fifty protestors. See Wulan Xian Renmin Jianchayuan Qisu Shu Citation2006.
39 Qinghai Sheng Wulan Xian Renmin Fayuan Xingshi Panjue Shu Citation2006.
40 The court hearing and the announcement of the sentences were public. The birth dates, political background, and level of education shown in the court judgment are important information for understanding the defendants’ socio-political backgrounds. For the sake of privacy, I have identified the defendants by their initial and have omitted their birth dates.
41 Although the defendant L was accused of being the organizer of the protests by the county prosecutors department, the county court did not accept this view. See Qinghai Sheng Wulan Xian Renmin Fayuan Xingshi Panjue Shu Citation2006, 5. Under Chinese law, a prison sentence with “suspended execution” (huan xing) means that if a person behaves well and receives no further criminal charges during her probationary period, their original sentence is not implemented.
42 Under judicial surveillance, the daily activities of the five defendants were checked on by the county police. Moreover, they were required to report to the police the places they visited and what they did if they travelled outside of Tongpo district. They were said to have successfully completed their surveillance period, and none of them was imprisoned in the end, other than detention for about half a year prior to the court decision.
43 It is worth noting that, according to Chinese law, ownership of the pastoral land in question belonged to the village (which is in this case was Chagaangol village), legally defined as “collective ownership” (jiti suoyou), a category which parallels “state ownership” (guojia suoyou). However, it is not necessarily the case that these pastoral lands belonged definitively to the village. As Ho Citation2001 has argued, the “collective” is deliberately ambiguously defined in Chinese land law and particularly for pastoral lands.
44 See Articles 21, 22, and 23 of Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committees of the People’s Republic of China.
45 The court judgment document states that the judgment was in accord with Article 290, Clause 1 and Article 72, Clause 1 of the Criminal Law of People’s Republic of China (Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Xingfa). The former defines the “crime of gathering together and disturbing public order” and its applied criminal sanctions, and the latter concerns probation (“suspended execution”) relating to this crime.
46 Qinghai Sheng Wulan Xian Renmin Fayuan Xingshi Panjue Shu Citation2006, 2.
47 The Constitution of People’s Republic of China protects religious freedom (Article 36) and human rights (Article 33) of the citizens of the state.
48 Ulaan County administratively is part of the Haixi Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. According to Article 47 of the Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law of the People’s Republic of China, “ … citizens of various nationalities are guaranteed the right to use their own spoken and written languages in court proceedings.”
49 The original version of this proverb in Mongolian is: “Tukh choorvoch toorchog totoroon, tokhoi hugarvach hanchui totoroon.” This proverb is widespread among Qinghai Mongols, as well as in other Mongol societies and communities.
50 Zhukovskaya Citation2009.
51 A Mongol agent of a mining company working on Mount Tongpo informed me that he consulted the chief lama of the Dulaan Monastery over the possibility of mining by himself alone. Mette M. High put it that lamas were often consulted by miners in Mongolia, in regards to whether a mining site is “bad” or “good” property, or over the auspicious day for “the breaking of the soil” (see High Citation2013, 761). Moreover, she reported elsewhere that a “mining lama” worked as an employee of a mining company in Uyanga, in central Mongolia (High Citation2018, 89–91). Shimamura Citation2014, 405 reports that shamans are becoming involved in environmental protection campaigns against foreign mining developments in contemporary Mongolia.
52 Local lamas, like all religious authorities and clergy in China, were registered and supervised by the Civil and Religious Bureau of the Ulaan County government.
53 See Yeh Citation2003.
54 Nyima and Yeh Citation2016, 169.
55 The power imbalance between local protesters and local government authorities cannot be overlooked. The latter are ready to deploy the regular police and the army police as needed. An example of such a power imbalance is what happened in Chamdo in China’s Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), where a crowd of about thousand Tibetans who were protesting against mining was quelled when the local police force fired tear gas and arrested six of the protesters. See Nyima and Yeh Citation2016, 166.
56 High Citation2018, Citation2013.