https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2972-8543
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ABSTRACT
Scholarly interest in the counter-movement during the third food regime transition has mainly been focused on open resistance. However, that view omits the grand picture consisting of 230 million Chinese smallholders and their everyday practices. This paper analyzes home gardening by Chinese smallholders based on a 10-year follow-up investigation. It reveals that their goal is to achieve ‘insiders eating home-grown food’, constituting a hidden and unconfrontational resistance to commercialization and globalization. Moreover, such resistance has formed a powerful force with strategic importance in China, having the potential to enlighten the counter-movement and thereby reshape the food regime.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all the smallholders in China who contributed to the survey for this study as well as Song Yiqing, Shu Shiwei, Liu Qian, Pan Sumei, Wang Caihong, Wang Qinghao, Huang kun, Huang Guoliang, Zhou Jinzhang, Lu Rongyan, Li Guanqi, Song Xin, Yue Xiaowenxu and Wang Xiaofei for supporting the distribution of the survey. The authors also thank Zhan Shaohua, Chen Weiping, Si Zhenzhong, Li Yanyan, Xu Licheng, Luo Jianzhang, Li Xiaotong and the three anonymous reviewers for their comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The core statement of this strategy is ‘Domestic grains play a main role in ensuring the food supply for the Chinese people’. (See https://www.idcpc.gov.cn/english/toutiao/202203/t20220307_148494.html)
2 UN Data, December 2022 (see https://population.un.org/wpp/)
3 This paper is focus on the third food regime transition. Polanyi's double movement is the research route of this paper. For a critical analysis, conceptual extension, and/or application of the food regime theory, refer to Friedmann (Citation1982, Citation1993, Citation2005, Citation2009, Citation2016, Citation2017); Friedmann and McMichael (Citation1989); McMichael (Citation1994, Citation2005, Citation2009, Citation2010, Citation2012, Citation2013a, Citation2013b, Citation2015, Citation2016, Citation2020); Araghi (Citation2003); Rosset (Citation2006); Pritchard (Citation2009); Pechlaner and Otero (Citation2010); Baines (Citation2015); Bernstein (Citation2016); Pritchard et al. (Citation2016); Niederle (Citation2018) and Belesky and Lawrence (Citation2019).
4 See the Part of ‘the process of resistance: the pressure of commercialization and the rebirth of the home garden’.
5 ‘Silent majority’ is a key concept coined by Chinese writer Wang Xiaobo to describe how Chinese people express their political opinions and grievances in a silent way most of the time. This was not only manifested in China in the 1980s, but in fact, whether citizens or smallholders, when they complained about their dissatisfaction, they would keep silent out of their own interests, and jointly create a kind of ‘conspiracy of silence’.
6 ‘Depoliticized politics’ is a concept proposed by Chinese scholar Wang Hui to emphasize the existence of hidden political practices in China that are distinct from open political expressions. In the vision of globalization and marketization, the political expression of the majority deviates from political practice. This departure exists in a tacit way within the scope of political tolerance, the bottom line of which is social and political stability, and constitutes ‘depoliticized politics’.
7 It was a title of letter that Mao Zedong and published on The Selected Works of Mao Zedong. The purpose of this letter was to help several CPC members to change their pessimistic thoughts about the Chinese revolution, and further interpret the path of the Chinese revolution, that is, encircling the cities from the countryside.
8 She Xiaoye put forward the concepts (tenacious weapons) of ‘legal resistance’ and ‘unconfrontational resistance’ in the study of Chinese peasant politics at the end of the 20th century. See She (Citation2008).
9 Article 9 of the Land Administration Law of the PRC (revised in 2019) stipulates that the fields in rural areas and urban suburbs belong to peasants collectively, except for those owned by the state by law, and those homesteads, private plots, and private hills are collectively owned by peasants. In addition, Article 4 and Article 62 provide detailed stipulations on agricultural land and homestead, respectively. (See: http://www.npc.gov.cn/npc/)
10 To be clear, it is inappropriate to ‘romanticize’ the Chinese government's excessive regulation of food production rights. For example, after 1956, the agricultural cooperative movement developed rapidly, and the types and quantities of poultry raised by individual smallholders were required to be reported in order to effectively limit the scale. The reason was that, in the political discourse of the time, an increase in the number of livestock due to breeding often meant that the ‘tail(leftover) of capitalism’ had grown back. Therefore, in actual management, there will be some strange phenomena, for example, male and female livestock were not allowed to breed at the same time.
11 ‘San zi’ means ‘self-owned land, free market, and self-financing’. ‘Yi bao’ means ‘contracted production to the smallholders’. ‘Four Freedoms’ means the freedom to rent land, to buy and sell commodity, to borrow money, and to trade.
12 China’s land regime stipulates that in rural areas, the right to use a house is separated from the ownership of the homestead the house occupies. The land occupied by the house belongs to the homestead, which is managed centrally by the village. It is not owned by individuals; rather, it belongs to public land. Nonetheless, the houses built on homesteads are privately owned by the peasants. It is worth noting that the use right of the homestead has no time limit, which is quite different from the 70-year restriction on the land use right of urban residential buildings in China.
13 In October 2005, the Fifth Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the CPC claimed that building a new socialist countryside is a major historical task in the process of China’s modernization, and this work should be steadily and solidly pushed forward in accordance with the requirements of ‘increasing production, affluent life, civilized rural customs, clean village, and democratic management’. (see http://www.gov.cn/jrzg/2005-10/11/content_76191.htm); In October 2017, the 19th National Congress of the CPC proposed the ‘Rural Revitalization Strategy’, and ‘clean and tidy village’ was further upgraded to ‘ecological livability’.
14 ‘Land to the tiller’, formed by the Chinese revolution, brought about the homogeneity of smallholders. After 1978, Deng Xiaoping advocated the restoration of the household contract responsibility system, and smallholders regained the right to cultivate lands. At present, the current situation of Chinese smallholders is ‘1.3 Chinese mu land per capita, and less than ten Chinese mu per household’. 98% of smallholders’ operation are small-scale businesses, and in theory, land per capita is only 3.84 Chinese mu.
15 This paper is part of a broader project covering the observation of food system substantiable development in China. The research foundation of the project was laid by the corresponding author, and the central task is to understand the process, depth, and future possibility of the transition of China’s food system. Its field research part of the project took place in six provinces with typical characteristics in China's eastern, central and western regions, including Hebei, Shandong, Shaanxi, Hunan, Guangxi, and Guangdong.
16 The content of argument collation includes interview recording, historical materials and research pictures, ensuring construction validity of the cases.
17 Land transfer refers to land use right transfer. The meaning of land use right transfer means that the smallholder, who owns the land contract management right, transfers the land management right (use right) to other smallholders or economic organizations, that is, retains the contract right and transfers the use right. The attempt was officially recognized by Chinese law in 2004. Its essence is another innovation of the land system based on the policy of land to the tiller.
18 The Information Office of the State Council of China Data, November 2016 (see http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2016-11/03/content_5128080.htm)
19 This is a relatively conservative estimation. NBSC Data, December 2017, (see http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/tjgb/nypcgb/qgnypcgb). According to the ‘Hundreds of Villages Survey’ database of China Rural Research Institute of Tsinghua University, the elderly over 65 and women combined account for about 80% of the labor force in rural areas. Based on this figure, it is estimated that nearly 110 million elderly people are engaged in agriculture production in China.
20 In 2021, the total number of migrant workers in China will be 293.51 million, an increase of 6.91 million or 2.4% over the previous year. Among them, there were 120.79 million local migrant workers, an increase of 4.1%; 171.72 million outgoing migrant workers, an increase of 1.3%. The average monthly income of migrant workers was 4,432 yuan, an increase of 8.8% over the previous year. NBSC Data, April 2022(see http://www.stats.gov.cn/xxgk/sjfb/zxfb2020/202204/t20220429_1830139.html)
22 The calculation formula of commercialization level in this paper is: 1 – (consumption of staple food per capita of rural residents / (output of staple agricultural products / rural population)). The available data covers the period from 1980 to 2020.
23 China introduced the concept of food sovereignty for the first time around 2008, See Zhou (Citation2008, Citation2010). In August 2013, the Internet discussion space centering on the website ‘Renmin shiwuzhuqan’ [Renmin’s Food Sovereignty] was established (see https://www.shiwuzq.com/portal.php), playing a key role in the spread of food sovereignty among intellectual circles.
24 On the one hand, autonomy refers to the productive autonomy of the smallholder, which is based on the home garden. On the other hand, it also can point to the autonomy of national food security that is constructed with the help of home gardens.
25 According to the Chinese recent official statistics, those rural households whose agricultural land area is less than 3.33 hectares (50 mu) can be called smallholders.
27 In November 2020, the Proposal on Formulating the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-term Goals for 2035 Made by Central Committee of the CPC was released. This document describes in detail the specific paths that China will take to advance key development strategies such as rural revitalization, urban-rural integration, and ecological civilization. (see http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2020-11/03/content_5556991.htm).
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Fang Ping
Fang Ping is an Associate Professor of School of Management, Guangxi Minzu University. He is host of National Natural Science Foundation of China (71903044) funded project. His research focuses on sustainable food systems, agriculture and rural sustainable development, and comparative studies in developing countries.
Ma Hui
Ma Hui is a PhD candidate of School of Agricultural Economics & Rural Development, Renmin University of China. Her research interests include rural population aging, rural sustainable development, etc.
Xi Yunxiao
Xi Yunxiao is a PhD of School of Agricultural Economics & Rural Development, Renmin University of China. Her research interests include food safety in China, new collective economy, and rural sustainable development.
Zhou Li
Zhou Li is a Professor of School of Agricultural Economics & Rural Development, Renmin University of China. He is the chief expert of the National Social Science Fund of China (20&ZD116) funded project. His research focuses on contemporary China studies, rural finance, agriculture and rural sustainable development, food security, food safety and food sovereignty.