CHINESE ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY NEWSLETTER
Issue 1:2, November 1994
This newsletter may be freely photocopied.
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────translation-abstract of Li Bozhong’s important study ofFrom the Editor
timber supply for the Lower Yangzi region in the lateimperial period. Although this article was written from the
The response to the first issue of the Chinesepoint of view of economic history, it provides essential
Environmental History Newsletter (CEHN) fully confirms
information for historians of the environment. We thankthe timeliness of this venture, and the breadth of interest in
Professors Li and Takeuchi for their cooperation.
the topic among scholars in a range of disciplines. At
Also in this edition, we are delighted to present a
present, there are about 100 subscribers, the great majority
statement sent to CEHN by Professor Han Guanghui ofof whom have direct research or other professional interests
Peking University, of the value of historical geography for
in Chinese environmental history or related topics. (Weinforming policy on sustainable development.
This
are, of course, also delighted to attempt to serve our “generalcontribution is an abridged version of an article alreadyinterest” subscribers). Within the last few weeks, a happy
published in China, and written, naturally, for a PRC
error in a computer network message has also broughtreadership. We are privileged to have this opportunity ofrequests for information about an Asian Environmental
gaining insight into Chinese scholarly perspectives on a
History Newsletter. Although the “Asian” in this title is an
topic of concern to all students of the environment. The
error, we hope that these enquirers will become subscribers
two case studies summarized by Professor Han will whetand contributors to the present newsletter. There is always
our appetites for further detail. We trust that Professor
much to be learned from cross-cultural comparison, while
Han’s article will help to sustain a fruitful cooperation
ecological régimes are not necessarily delimited by national
between environmental historians/historical geographersboundaries.
within and outside China; and we look forward greatly toThis second issue of the newsletter exemplifies thereceiving further articles from China.
international and interdisciplinary cooperation, and the
The arrival of so many high-quality manuscripts (not to
mixture of empirical research and conceptual exploration,
mention items for the “noticeboard” and “thesis abstracts”
which will, we hope, characterize the newsletter throughout
sections) unfortunately necessitates delay in sending out theits existence. On the interdisciplinary front, Richard P.
directory of subscribers. This will be issued separately, as
Suttmeier, from political science, considers the possibilities
soon as possible. The delay will at least have theof mutually enriching dialogue between risk analysis andadvantage of giving readers who have not yet formallyenvironmental history, with reference to China, while Nayna
subscribed the opportunity to do so, and thus let others know
Jhaveri responds as a geographer to Peter Perdue’sof their research interests. Subscription to the hard copy
reflections, in the last issue of CEHN, on Chinese property
version has been facilitated for inhabitants of Australia,
rights and environmental change. We are thoroughly
Britain, France and Japan by the existence of distribution
pleased to have these invitation-challenges from othercoordinators for these countries (for their names anddisciplines, and hope that they will be the first of many.
addresses, see under “Submission and Subscription
We also hope that others will follow Ms Jhaveri’s initiative,
Information”). Any kind person willing to serve as
and write responses to articles in the present andcoordinator for another country should please contact theforthcoming issues. If this newsletter can serve as a forum
editor.
for discussion and debate, it will richly fulfil its central
Two subscribers have expressed the hope that the
purpose.
newsletter’s scope can be broadened to include material
Empirical historical research is represented by three
pertaining to the teaching of Chinese environmental history.
contributions, two of which make scholarship alreadyThis seems an excellent idea; submissions in this area are
published in East Asian languages accessible to a still
therefore invited.
broader readership than it is likely to have had so far.
Finally, we gratefully welcome a new translator of theYang Dong presents some firstfruits of his own research on
newsletter. Liu Shi-yung, of the Department of History,
the environmental history of the Shaoxing highlands over
University of Pittsburgh, has generously undertaken to
fifteen centuries. Christian Daniels devotes the firstprepare the Chinese-language version of this issue. It is
installment of a three-part article on ethno-history andalso appropriate to thank Liu Ts’ui-jung (Academia Sinica),
environmental history in Yunnan to introducing, and
Huang Tsokan (Indiana State University) and Wu Kegang
amplifying, a rich study by the Japanese scholar, Takeuchi(University of Liverpool) for assistance in translation editing
Fusaji, of an 1821 uprising and its background of(Chinese-English as well as English-Chinese).
environmental change. Finally, a team from MIT (Peter
Perdue, Kong Jiangti, and Amy Yen) has prepared a
Page 1

Contents of This Issue
Page
Noticeboard(research reports on “The Formationof Man-land Systems in the Chifeng
Region since the Holocene” and“Water Knowledge and Technology inModern China”; conferences;publications)

2

Risk Analysis and Environmental History: Some
Complementarities by Richard P. Suttmeier

4

Environmental Degradation, Forest Protection
and Ethno-history in Yunnan (I): The Uprisingby Swidden Agriculturalists in 1821 by
Christian Daniels

8

Mountains and Forests: The History of the
Shaoxing Highlands during the 4th-18th
Centuries by Yang Dong

10

Sustainable Development: A View fromHistorical Geography by Han Guanghui

13

The Problem of Timber Supply in Jiangnan
in the Ming and Qing Periods by Li Bozhong(translation-abstract)

16

The Commons and Environmental Change in
China by Nayna J. Jhaveri

20

Thesis Abstract Section“Sustainable Development for Taiwan:
Influences of Energy and Energy-use
Pollution”, by Hurng-Jyuhn Wang

22

Submission and Subscription Information

23

recent archaeological discoveries from the Neolithic Age in
the Chifeng region, the Centre of Historical Geography at
Peking University is just embarking on research on
environmental change and the development and decline ofcultural landscapes in the region since the Holocene. It
will pay special attention to problems of balance and control
in the man-land relationship.
The project is focussing initially on past and present
environmental change in the Qing dynasty’s imperial
hunting zone at Mulan, in the upper reaches of the Luan
river system. This was already one of the Centre’s major
historical geographical research topics; for the thinking thathas guided the research, see Hou Renzhi, “Zai lun lishi dilixue de lilun yu shijian” [A Reexamination of the Theory andPractice of Historical Geography], in Beijing Daxue xuebao:
Lishi dili xue zhuankan [The Peking University Journal:
Special Issue on Historical Geography] (1992), pp. 1-5.
See also Han Guanghui, “Ke chixu fazhan de lishi dili xue
sikao” [Historical Geographical Reflections on Sustainable
Development], in Beijing Daxue xuebao 3 (1994),
Philosophy and Social Sciences Section, pp. 43-49. The
following research articles have already been published in
the above-mentioned special issue of the Peking University
Journal:Cui Haiting, “Qingdai Mulan Weichang de xingfei yu
ziran jingguan de bianhua” [Landscape Change and the Riseand Fall of the Mulan Imperial Hunting Park of the Qing
Dynasty] (pp. 118-23);
Zhang Baoxiu, “Qingdai kaipi Mulan Weichang de dilitiaojian” [The Geographical Conditions for theDevelopment of the Mulan Hunting Park in the Qing
Dynasty] (pp. 124-34);
Deng Hui, “Qingdai Mulan Weichang de huanjing
bianqian yanjiu” [A Study of Environmental Change in the
Qing Mulan Hunting Park] (pp. 135-43);
Zhao Zhongshu, “Cong diming jiaodu guankui Mulan
Weichang de huanjing bianqian” [Glimpsing Environmental
Change at the Mulan Hunting Park through Place Names](pp. 144-57).
Water Knowledge and Technology in Modern China

Noticeboard
Research reports
The Formation of Man-land Systems in the Chifeng
Region since the Holocene
Centre of Historical Geography, Peking University
The Chifeng region lies on the boundary between
North and Northwest China in the zone of mixed agriculture
and pastoralism in the basins of the West Liao River, Daling
River, and the upper reaches of the Luan River. It
occupied an important position in the development ofancient Chinese civilization. On the basis of the important
Page 2Baruch Boxer, Cook College/Rutgers University
Professor Boxer reports as follows on this book project,funded by the National Science Foundation, 1993-95.
“This project will further understanding of relations between
cultural and technological aspects of water knowledge intwentieth century China. Primary and secondary Chineseand Western sources will be analyzed to assess how shuili, a
traditional body of scientific and technical knowledge
relating to water use and control, is modified and adapted in
response to the demands of technological modernization andchange. Contrasts since the 1920s between Chinese andforeign views on social benefits and costs of water
engineering in the Yangzi basin will be analyzed withreference to three cases in which assumptions about thesocial and ecological effects of engineering solutions towater-related problems can be assessed. A major goal is to
document the process through which traditional attitudes
and beliefs about the human and environmental impacts ofwater engineering change in response to foreign values,
technologies, and political ideologies. The research willcontribute to understanding of human dimensions ofenvironmental change by showing how traditional beliefs
and practices influence technological modernization ofwater systems. The results of the study will be of interest
to students of modern China and the comparative social
history of science, technology, and engineering.”

Forthcoming and recent conferences
International Symposium on China and the World in the
Eighteenth Century, Beijing, 1995
This symposium, to be sponsored by the Institute of Qing
History at Renmin Daxue, will be held during June
20th-24th, 1995. The scope of the symposium includes
China’s domestic eighteenth-century history as well asinternational eighteenth-century history. Since the list of
topics on which papers are invited mentions China’s latentproblems in the eighteenth century, as well as frontier andethnic history, it would seem that the symposium could well
be of great interest to readers of this newsletter. Papers
may be submitted in Chinese, English, French, Japanese or
Russian, and should reach the Institute of Qing History by
February 20th 1995 (an abstract may be substituted if needbe).
Those wishing to participate should return an“Intention to Participate Form” by January 20th 1995 to:
Dr Gao Xiang
Institute of Qing History
Renmin University of China
39 Haidian Rd., Haidian District
Beijing
100872(Fax: 861-2566374;
Tel.: 861-2563399-2864)
International Conference on Historical Geography,
Beijing, 1996
The Committee on Historical Geography of the Chinese
Geographical Association plans to hold this conference at
Peking University in the summer of 1996. The formal
conference announcement will be issued in the summer of
1995. Those wishing to receive a copy should write to:Professor Han GuanghuiCentre of Historical Geography
Peking University
Beijing
100871(Fax: 861-2501187)

Recent conferences
Two historical geography conferences which have takenplace this autumn are the International Conference on the
Great Wall (Beijing, September) and the Annual Meeting of
the Chinese Ancient Capitals Association (Anyang,
October). No further information about the proceedings has
yet reached CEHN.

Journals, research tools, and otherpublications
New cartographic resource (in preparation). Professor
Shi Nianhai, of the Institute for Chinese Historical
Geography, Shaanxi Teacher’s University, Xi’an, reportsthat he is working on a “Chinese Historical Agricultural andStockraising” map series. He has also contributed theSui-Tang volume of a multi-volume history of China
published by Shanghai renmin chubanshe.
Japanese Studies on the History of Water Control in China:
A Selected Bibliography. Compiled by Mark Elvin,
Hiroaki Nishioka, Keiko Tamura, and Joan Kwek, with thecooperation of the Chūgoku Suirishi Kenkyūkai (Society for
the Study of the History of Water Control in China);
published by the Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian
National University in conjunction with the Centre for East
Asian Cultural Studies for Unesco, Tōyō Bunko, Tokyo,
1994.
The coverage includes irrigation, drainage, urban watersupply, inland water transport, defences against floods andtides, water control technology, and hydrological andhydraulic theories. Entries appear in both romanizedJapanese and Japanese script, with English translation. The
subject-matter is indexed by period, area, and topical codes.
A substantial introduction by Mark Elvin surveys the major
themes of Japanese scholarship on water control in China.
The bibliography costs A$45.00 plus postage, and may
be ordered from:The Secretary, East Asian History
Division of Pacific and Asian History
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200
Australia
Cheques etc. should be made payable to “East AsianHistory.”
There are also plans for an electronic version of thebibliography, which should become available via
INTERNET during the first half of 1995. For further
information, please contact Dr Matthew Ciolek, whosee-mail address is Matthew.Ciolek@anu.edu.au.
Environment and History (ISSN 0969-3407), published by
The White Horse Press at 1 Strond, Isle of Harris, Scotland
PA83 3UD, UK. The subscription for individuals is $US
Page 3

50.00 per annum. Manuscripts for publication should besubmitted to The Editor, Environment and History, c/o The
White Horse Press, 10 High Street, Knapwell, Cambridge
CB3 8NR, UK. The fax number for the Harris office is 44859 520 204.
Asia-Pacific Uplands is a newsletter of the Pacific Science
Association published in Hong Kong. It focusses on
upland environmental and developmental issues in theregion, including China. There is no charge to receive thispublication, which usually appears twice a year. Anyone
interested should write to:Prof. R.D. Hill
Editor, Asia-Pacific Uplands
c/o Department of Geography and Geology
University of Hong Kong
HONG KONG

Risk Analysis and Environmental
History: Some Thoughts on
Complementarities
Richard P. Suttmeier
University of Oregon
The emergence of a field of Chinese environmental
history is an exciting development for many of us who are
not historians, but who have keen interests in China’s
contemporary environmental quandaries. While there ismuch to be learned about the latter from a-historicalperspectives derived from disciplines in the natural andsocial sciences — from geophysics to political economy —there clearly are also deep currents of culture and tradition
shaping contemporary environmental problems which can
only be understood historically. This is especially evident
when we consider environmental problems in terms of risk
— how human beings identify, assess, manage and represent
the uncertainties from environmental and technologicalhazards that surround them.
Risk issues have come to play important andcontroversial roles in contemporary Western thinking about
environmental policy over the past fifteen years or so, andare poised to become more central to Chinese environmental
policy as well. Technical risk analysis can help clarify
areas of uncertainty in policy formulation, and, more
importantly, can help policy makers prioritize hazards andthus identify those risks which warrant the greatest attention
and commitment of resources. In the U.S.A of 1994, forinstance, Congress, the White House, and agencies such as
the Environmental Protection Agency are increasingly
calling for more and better risk analysis in order to getpriorities right, and improve the bases for regulatory policy.
Page 4At the same time, the methods and uses of risk analysis
in policy-making have become the objects of widespread
critical comment from those who see it as a tool for
centralized, technocratic — and, thus, by implication,
undemocratic — approaches to the management ofenvironmental problems. Unease about risk analysis isreinforced by the findings of students of risk perception
which call attention to the disparities between popular andexpert risk perceptions, and demonstrate with considerable
effect that the former cannot be readily dismissed simply as“misinformed” and/or “irrational.”
The importance of risk in policy-making, and theconsiderable controversy about how risk should beunderstood, have spawned a rapidly growinginterdisciplinary literature in the West focussing on risk
issues. This literature goes considerably beyond technicalrisk analysis narrowly understood. Where proponents of
the latter might define risk as a function of the probability ofan accident (or other untoward event) and the magnitude ofits consequences (R=PM), many other students of risk havecome to see risk as including something more. To explain
how popular perceptions of risk diverge from those ofexperts, for instance, the “something more” might include
such factors as trust, liability, and consent (thus,
R=PM+TLC) (Rayner, 1992). The introduction of these
considerations, of course, requires that risk studies takeseriously the cultural and institutional settings in which risks
are determined and managed. It also forces us to consider
the extent to which we should regard risks as socially or
culturally constructed. A cross cultural and historicallyinformed research agenda becomes especially appealing inthese circumstances, as do new cooperative relations
between students of risk and environmental historians.
During the past two years, with support from the
National Science Foundation, I have been involved in a
project on “Evolving Chinese Approaches to theManagement of Technological Risks.” The project isconcerned with environmental and safety issues incontemporary China, with special attention given to casematerials drawn from nuclear power, airline safety, andflood control (Suttmeier, 1994). On the assumption that
one cannot fully understand contemporary problems of risk
without understanding the cultural and historical settings forthinking about risk, I have also attempted to understand how
the concept of risk could be applied to one of the more
serious hazard management challenges faced in traditional
China, that of flood control. As the project has proceeded,
I have found myself both drawing lessons for interpreting
today’s cases from the historical materials (as presented, forinstance, in such works as Dodgen, 1989; Leonard, 1988;
Perdue, 1987; and Will, 1990), and wanting to interrogate
the historical records further, with questions arising from theanalysis of the present.
In trying to understand the perils and promises ofnuclear power, the problems of airline and mine safety, aworsening flood damage record, and China’s environmental

dilemmas more generally, the choice of aninterpretive/explanatory framework is no small challenge.
Mixing historical inspirations with a-historical behavioral
considerations, I have found it useful to approachinterpretive issues using three analytically separable (but notmutually exclusive) explanatory frameworks. I will referto them here as the “modernization”, “reform”, and“culture” perspectives.
The first considers China’s contemporary risk
problems as a phase of industrialization through which
others have gone.
Defenders of a modernization
perspective of this sort would note that many of the “social
costs of modernization” which are becoming so evident intoday’s China are reminiscent of those faced by “successful
modernizers” (Western Europe, Japan, the U.S.A) in otherperiods. These countries also faced severe environmental
and safety problems at earlier stages of industrialization, but
overcame them once other “more basic” human needs weresatisfied, and additional wealth was available to sustain new
regulatory régimes (laws, policies, implementing agencies)
and other modern risk management institutions. In this“sanguine” view of modernization, a successfully
modernizing China can be expected to follow a similar
trajectory.
There is considerably more to the risk-modernization
relationship, however, than the identification of phases ofindustrialization.
Less sanguine observers ofmodernization have problematized a link between risk andmodernization to develop a critique of modernity,
questioning whether “successful” modernizers really can besaid to have developed workable schemes for managing risk
(cf. Beck, 1993; Giddens, 1990, 1991; Mol and Spaargaren,1993). By extension, this dissent would imply that China
is on the wrong path, that workable approaches to newhazards will not arise from modernization, and that China’s
risk problems must therefore be reconceptualized.
A slightly different approach to the risk-modernization
relationship has been suggested by Kirk Smith. Taking his
cue from the demographer’s concept of “demographictransition,” Smith has introduced the notion of a “risktransition” which occurs with modernization (Smith, 1990).
In this view, the risks found in “traditional” societies —
plagues, famines, uncontrollable natural hazards, and othersources of early death — are gradually reduced with the helpof modern science, technology and industry, but are thenreplaced by new forms of risk (cancer, nuclear accidents,
plane crashes, air and water pollution, etc.) associated withindustrial society. For many industrializing societies, i.e.,
those in the risk transition, both types of risk must be faced
simultaneously. However, traditional risk management
strategies have often lost their effectiveness in such societies,
and “modern” ones are not yet fully developed.
While China can be thought of as being in the type ofrisk transition described by Smith, it is one that iscomplicated — and, for the social scientist, made moreinteresting — by the fact that it is also in an institutionaltransition from a socialist mode of political economy
towards a market economy with confusedly assigned
property rights. This transition provides the basis for asecond perspective, one which views risk in terms of“reform.” Reform factors and modernization factors areanalytically separable, but, empirically, they are often
closely intertwined. Risks from floods have increased incontemporary China, for instance, because of new land use
practices driven by economic growth (“modernization”) andthe degeneration of inherited flood control institutions as aresult of “reform.”
Risks of airline accidents haveincreased as a result of the rapid expansion of the airtransport system and the incomplete transition of the Civil
Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) from a “ministryof air transport” to a modern regulatory agency. Risks
which were once managed by socialist institutionalarrangements become more serious when these decay andalternative institutional forms have yet to take hold.
In his compelling recent report on risk and thetransition from socialism in Bulgaria, Brent Yarnal makes
clear that these problems of institutional change are notunique to China (Yarnal, 1994). According to Yarnal, theBulgarian transition has led to increasingly severe risks as aresult of lost state capacity to protect the public fromindustrial and environmental hazards. The loss of state
capacity in the Chinese case is also evident to foreignobservers and the Chinese leadership alike. But China is
not entirely helpless in mobilizing domestic resources todeal with this problem, and has been working with partners
in the international community (foreign governments, theUnited Nations and other international organizations, andforeign corporations) to build new regulatory institutions to
help manage the risks of industrial society.
To assess the prospects for these initiatives, it is helpful
to go beyond “modernization” and “reform”, and introduce athird perspective, one that is sensitive to issues of culture
and tradition. In trying to develop this third perspective, I
have found it helpful to think about issues of culture andtradition in four modes: in terms of their effects on theindividual, on organizational behavior, on the actions of thestate, and in terms of Sino-foreign interactions.
The current project has not taken questions of how
culture shapes judgement and cognition at the individuallevel as a primary focus. Nevertheless, there is a literature
here to be considered, and recent work by Chinese scholars
has begun to examine, in Chinese contexts, the importantquestions which have been raised about individual risk
perception in non-Chinese populations (Zhang, 1994; Xu
and Xie, 1994). A related issue has to do with how
construals of self — arguably more collectivist in the
Chinese context than in a Western — shapes perceptions
and understandings of risk (cf. Marcus and Kitayama, 1991).
More broadly, it would be helpful to know more about the
influences of culture on Chinese approaches to problems of
uncertainty and insurance. Do cultural factors bias thethinking of Chinese individuals confronted with risk away
Page 5

from graduated probability calculations about uncertainty
towards more dichotomous, black and white — perhaps
fatalistic — notions of risk (Wright and Phillips, 1980;
Wright, 1984; Pollock and Chen, 1986)? If such patternsof information processing and judgement are found, is their
explanation really to be found in “culture”, or perhaps intheories of “modernization” instead? Is the uncertainty
associated with encountering natural and technological risks
processed in the same ways by individual Chinese as
financial and commercial risks might be? Where do
attitudes towards insurance, as a strategy for managing
uncertainty, fit in? What are these attitudes, and are they afunction of culture, modernization, or of the dominantarrangements of society’s institutions?
The latter question points to the need to blend culture’s
effects on individuals with its effects on organizations. At
a second, or “micro-organizational level”, approaches tothinking about and managing hazards can be explored withreference to important Chinese principles of humanrelationships, especially those pertaining to hierarchy andauthority relations (including norms of caution in speech —especially that addressed to superiors), concerns for saving
and giving “face”, and the subtle issues of blame andaccountability which provide such rich textures to Chineseorganizational life. A central question about risk at thislevel is the extent to which adherence to inherited principles
of human relations fits with “objective” requirements for
managing natural hazards or complex and demanding
technologies.
In the contemporary cases, for instance, the safe
operation of modern technological systems (nuclear reactors,
chemical plants, jet aircraft, etc.) is inseparable from thecreation of a “safety culture” among operators, managers,
and regulators. Central components of a safety culture
include giving primacy to the safety specifications of thetechnology, and promoting active learning about
contingencies not covered in the specifications.
So
understood, the promotion of a safety culture requires,among other things, open communications, frank exchanges,
and free reporting of “incidents” and anomalies. To what
extent are Chinese culture-based forms of behavior —concerns for face, the importance of guanxi, a reluctance tochallenge authority when it is wrong on crucial technicalpoints, etc. — consistent with such demands and with therequirements for effective risk management more generally?
With reference to the airline case, for instance, where
cockpit management is an important part of safe operations,is the “Confucian cockpit” (to use Stephen Durrant’s phrase)
also the safe cockpit (Durrant, 1994)?
Micro-organizational concerns of this type merge atsome point with issues at what might be called the“macro-institutional” level, where the actions of the state areof greatest interest. Here, we find the Chinese state — bothtraditional and Mao-era — often aspiring to become an
instrument of total insurance with regard to major hazards— even to the point of tying its legitimacy to its success inPage 6

becoming such an instrument. The record, however,suggests that such aspirations characteristically get defeatedby both the physical and administrative complexities of thehazard management problems. This is especially evident inrealms where something more than local management isrequired, but where the central state lacks resources forconsistent attention to the problem. Thus, from imperial
times to the Maoist period, much about hazard management
and hazard creation seems to be tied to complex interactions
between authoritarian states seeking to manage and insure
against risks, and natural and social phenomena beyond thereach of the state’s authority.
Adding texture andcomplexity to this conception of Chinese problems with risk
have been such intervening factors as varying views ofnature, property rights arrangements, available scientificknowledge, and prevailing technological practices, all ofwhich are both of historical importance, and quite germane
for understanding current approaches to risk (cf. Suttmeier,1994).
A fourth mode for thinking about the influences ofculture and tradition, which cross-cuts the above three,involves Sino-foreign interactions. Chinese reactions to
the introduction of steam locomotives by foreigners in thenineteenth century illustrate how “risk” can be sociallyconstructed out of such interactions. The coming ofEuropean, American, and later Soviet hydraulic engineers
produced a complex legacy shaping the culture of water
management and flood control thinking in China (cf. Greer,
1979; Todd, 1938). The introduction of modern jet
airliners poses cultural challenges to Chinese maintenancepersonnel (Bauer, 1986) which, in turn, affect the risks oftravelling by air in China. More generally, admiration for,resentment of, and feelings of superiority or inferiority
towards foreign technology in modern Chinese history are
all part of the context in which new regulatory régimes andother modern risk management institutions are being
established in contemporary China with the kinds of foreign
involvement and, thus, foreign cultural influence noted
above.
In the ongoing project described above, the work ofhistorians on environmental issues has been of considerable
help. I have also come to believe, however, that thecontemporary interdisciplinary study of risk has the potential
to generate a number of interesting questions which might
be of use to environmental historians. For instance, can weenhance our understanding of the varying views of nature in
the Chinese tradition by seeing them in relation tocommitments to specific institutional forms, as somestudents of risk have suggested in different contexts (cf.
Douglas, 1992; Schwartz and Thompson, 1990)? In
considering the ways in which risks were perceived,
characterized, and appraised in China, can we assume thatmechanisms for distributing risks — often coercive, andcharacterized by unequal distributions of power — werelargely responsible for the ways risks were identified andassessed?

Finally, what can more explicit attention to traditional
institutions for managing risks tell us about approaches tothe environment in Chinese history, and about Chinesesociety more generally? While family and state seem tostand at opposite ends of a micro-macro scale of risk
management institutions in the Chinese tradition,
contemporary risk studies suggest that any society’s risk
management strategies would typically involve a range ofother institutions and practices — insurance schemes,
liability law, the assignment of property rights, professional
standards, etc. — which intermix with family and state toform a complex ensemble of institutions. What constituted
the “complex ensemble” in China? How well did it work?
And how did it shape human interventions into nature andthe “construction” of the environment?
How might
attention to risk management institutions contribute to ourunderstandings of civil society, and debates about a “publicsphere,” in traditional China?
But, just as the exciting interdisciplinary literature on
risk can help frame intriguing questions for historians,
environmental history has a great deal to contribute to risk
studies. While many practitioners of the latter would
acknowledge the importance of institutions and culturalvalues in shaping how we think about risk, the empiricalgrounds from which such judgements are drawn havetypically been a-historical. While important, contemporarycase studies of risk often leave little room for the rich,nuanced narratives of the sort which environmental history
is beginning to provide, and which allow us more fully toappreciate how risk can be socially and culturally
constructed. With Chinese environmental history justbeginning to acquire its collective identity, and with studiesof risk in China still in their infancy, the pursuit ofopportunities for regular cross-fertilization of ideas between
the two holds promise, and warrants our continuing
attention.

Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Greer, Charles. 1979. Water Management in the Yellow
River Basin of China. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Leonard, Jane Kate. 1988.
Modern Asian Studies 22:4.

“Controlling from Afar.”Marcus, H.R. and Kitayama, S. 1991. “Culture and Self:
Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation.”
Psychological Review 98.
Mol, Arthur P.J. and Spaargaren, Gert.
1993.
“Environment, Modernity and the Risk Society: The
Apocalyptic Horizon of Environmental Reform.”
International Sociology 8:4.
Perdue, Peter C. 1987. Exhausting the Earth: State andPeasant in Hunan, 1500-1850. Cambridge, Mass.: Council
on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.
Pollock, Stephen M. and Chen, Kan. 1986. “Strive toConquer the Black Stink: Decision Analysis in the People’s
Republic of China.” Interfaces 16:2.
Rayner, Steve.
1992.
“Cultural Theory and Risk
Analysis.” In Sheldon Krimsky and Dominic Golding, eds.,
Social Theories of Risk. Westport: Praeger.
Schwarz, M. and Thompson, M. 1990. Divided We
Stand. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Smith, Kirk R.
1990.
“The Risk Transition.”International Environmental Affairs 2:3.

REFERENCES
Bauer, E.E. 1986. China Takes Off: Technology Transfer
and Modernization. Seattle: University of Washington
Press.

Suttmeier, Richard P.
1994.
“Risk in China:
Comparative and Historical Perspectives on its Social
Construction and Management.”
Technological
Forecasting and Social Change 46:2.

Beck, Ulrich. 1993. Risk Society: Towards a New
Modernity. London: Sage Publications.

Todd, O.J. 1938. Two Decades in China. Beijing: The
Association of Chinese and American Engineers.

Dodgen, Randall.
1989.
Controlling the Dragon:
Confucian Engineers and the Yellow River in the Late
Daoguang, 1835-50. Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University.

Will, Pierre-Étienne. 1990. Bureaucracy and Famine in
Eighteenth-Century China. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.

Douglas, Mary. 1992.
New York: Routledge.

Durrant, Stephen. 1994. Personal communication.

Wright, G. 1984. “Organizational, Group, and Individual
Decision Making in Cross-Cultural Perspective.” In G.
Wright, ed., Behavioral Decision Making. New York:
Plenum.

Giddens, Anthony.

Wright, G. and Phillips, L.D. 1980. “Cultural Variation

Risk and Blame.

1990.

London and

The Consequences ofPage 7

and Probablistic Thinking: Alternative Ways of Dealing
with Uncertainty.” International Journal of Psychology
15.
Xu Liancang and Xie Xiaofei.
communication.

1994.

Personal

Yarnal, Brent. 1994. “Socio-Economic Restructuring
and Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards in Bulgaria.”
Disasters 18:2.
Zhang Jianguang. 1994. “Environmental Hazards in the
Chinese Public’s Eyes.” Risk Analysis 13:5.

Environmental Degradation, Forest
Protection and Ethno-History in
Yunnan(I) The Uprising by Swidden
Agriculturalists in 1821
Christian Daniels
Institute for the Study of the Languages and Cultures ofAsia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Field trips on various occasions over the past five years
have alerted me to some of the less well known aspects of
the history, both past and contemporary, of environmental
degradation in Yunnan, and the consequences of policies
designed to curb it. Although the main purpose of my
excursions has been to record pre-modern technology still in
use among the non-Han peoples in the remoter parts of theprovince, one cannot help wondering how the destruction ofenvironmental resources has shaped their history.
Environmental degradation here undoubtedly derived
from the peculiar circumstances surrounding incessant Han
Chinese settlement after the Ming, and the establishment ofcommercial activities geared to the demands of the
Empire-wide market. Yet Chinese ethno-botanists andanthropologists have demonstrated how the practices ofsome non-Han peoples have helped to preserve
environmental equilibrium rather than disrupt it. In thethree installments of this article, my purpose is not to try tojudge the rights and wrongs according to the dichotomy of
Han and non-Han: it is far too early to formulate grandschemes or pass judgement. I merely wish to present indigested form three specific examples, randomly selectedfrom published material and my own field notes, to illustrate
the effects of Han-induced environmental change on thehistory of the indigenous inhabitants of Yunnan; theirtraditional practices to protect the local ecology; and how
their lifestyles have been altered by the recent establishment
Page 8of nature reserves.
Everyone agrees that the large scale immigration of
Han Chinese in search of new frontiers, especially following
the population boom of the eighteenth century, wrought
profound changes on non-Han peoples. In south-west
China, as elsewhere in the Empire, Han settlers gained astrong foothold once they succeeded in acquiring the rights
to land originally held by indigenes. In the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries, the territories of non-Han principalities
were incorporated into regular administrative units throughthe gaitu guiliu policy. The resulting weakening of thepolitical power and authority of the non-Han hereditaryrulers tended to bolster the position of the Han immigrants.
On some occasions, the indigenes rose up in arms against
the settlers, but in the long run they were either assimilated
into local Han society, or chose to isolate themselves fromthe source of contamination by moving out of reach.
The Lisu are a Tibetan-Burman language speaking
people who are recorded as dwelling in an area straddlingthe boundary between southern Sichuan and north-western
Yunnan from the time of the Tang dynasty (618-906 A.D.).
At present, most of the Lisu in Yunnan live on slopes andplateaus at elevations of over 3,000 metres on both sides of
the Jinsha, Lancang and Nujiang Rivers. As of 1982, thetotal Lisu population in Yunnan numbered 460,000.1 In a
recent article on the 1821 Lisu uprising, the Japanese
historian Takeuchi Fusaji has demonstrated how landalienation and forest clearance for exploitative commercial
agriculture by Han immigrants deprived the non-Han
swidden cultivators of their livelihoods, and drove them torevolt.2 This extremely fine article has passed unnoticed in
English-language studies because it was written in Japanese,and published in an obscure journal. In view of theshortage of documentation on the connection between
environmental degradation and ethnic unrest, I should like todevote the rest of this installment to providing readers withan account of Takeuchi’s findings. On occasion I haveadded information to clarify points made by Takeuchi.
Let us begin with the uprising itself. Early in 1821, aforce of 1,500 armed Lisu attacked Han immigrants inYongbei Ting (a Yunnan jurisdiction south of the borderwith Sichuan), demanding the return of their land. Withina few days, the number of Lisu participants had swelled toabout 8,000. Some two weeks later, a contingent of over
100 Lisu marched into neighbouring Dayao county to settle
accounts with Han settlers, who had refused them access to
grazing land, and beaten some of the Lisu. 4,000 local Tai(Baiyi) and Yi (Luoluo) tribesmen immediately joined theirranks, and the combined force ended up killing over 500
persons. Although this uprising did not last long, and wassoon put down by the Qing army, the fact that a multi-ethnic
force was raised, almost spontaneously, within such a shortperiod bespeaks deep-seated common grievances against
Han settlers among different ethnic groups. Moreover,since the Lisu and the Yi practised swidden agriculture on
hill slopes, while the Tai engaged in wet rice cultivation onthe valley floors, it also shows that the grievances were so
ubiquitous that they transcended the great variations inelevation, a topographical factor which historically helped toreduce ethnic conflict between groups engaged in different
forms of agriculture.
In analyzing the causes of the uprising, Takeuchi
particularly singles out land acquisition and environmentally
exploitative commercial agriculture as the main factors.
Let us consider each one in turn.
1.

Land alienation
After their capture, the Lisu instigators stressed the lossof their land as the major motive for the uprising. In thewords of a principal Lisu protagonist whose Chinese namewas Chen Tianpei:
In the past, wet and dry-field land in ourbarbarian territory (yidi) was solely cultivated by[us] barbarian people (yiren), and we were able to
make a livelihood. Later, the hereditary ruler(tusi) [and his subordinates, viz.] the tumu and the
bashi successively sold [the land] through diantransactions [see below for explanation] tovillainous Han from various places in Guizhou
and Sichuan, who have occupied it for cultivation.
These villainous Han have often madeunreasonable demands on [us] barbarian people,
which has made it difficult for [us] to maintain[our] households; therefore, many [of our people]
bear hatred against them in their hearts.3
The expression “barbarian territory” refers to the factthat the Lisu came under the jurisdiction of the Beisheng
Aboriginal Department (Beisheng tu zhou), which was stilladministered by a non-Han hereditary ruler (tusi) with theHan surname Gao. From about 1745, the ancestors of theincumbent tusi had begun to sell their official estates(guanzhuang, i.e. estates in lieu of salary) to Han settlers.
Since the tusi depended on rent from these estates for funds
for local administration and his own private income, such atransfer of indigenous land to the Han had extremely
adverse effects on local society. In the long run, it reduced
the income of the hereditary ruler, which in turn ultimately
weakened his ability to govern, and left large numbers of
non-Han landless.
Qingbao, the Governor-General of Yunnan andGuizhou who quelled the uprising, stressed this last point.
He distinguished the following three methods by which Han
settlers had acquired land in Beisheng Aboriginal
Department: (i) sale by the tusi; (ii) illicit sale by tumu andbashi, who were officials of the tusi; and (iii) sale by
non-Han tenants cultivating land owned by the tusi.
Problems arose because the new Han proprietors shunned
non-Han as tenants, and chose to rent their property
exclusively to recent Han immigrants who could afford topay rent deposits in silver. Presumably, stiff competition

among the large numbers of Han newcomers made it
possible for proprietors to demand rent deposits. This
resulted in increasing numbers of non-Han being denied
access to land for cultivation and grazing. Dianmai, theterm used for land sales in the sources, signified that theseller enjoyed the right to buy the property back at the saleprice at any time in the future. The indigenous inhabitants,
already deprived of their means of livelihood, despaired ofever being able to raise the money to redeem their land, andfor this reason slaughtered tumu and bashi in their rage, as
well as Han settlers.
2.

Commercial cultivation of mushrooms
In Yongbei Ting and the contiguous county of Dayao,
the main activity that the settlers from Jiangsu and Zhejiang
undertook after securing the rights to hill land, where theLisu dwelled, was the cultivation of mushrooms. Theirmethods were so destructive that I should like to cite in fullthe description given in the 1845 Dayao county gazetteer:In recent years, immigrants from Jiangsu andZhejiang have bought forests through diantransactions. They fell large trees an armful indiameter, and lying them on the ground, pare off
their tops and branches, and chisel twenty tothirty holes in the trunks. Fine ash is placed
inside the holes, and a small quantity of a mixture
containing the powder of the ground stipes of oldmushrooms [of the species xiangxun, Lentinus
edodes (Berk) Sing.] and cold rice gruel isapplied to each hole, which is then covered with
branches and leaves to protect it from the sun.
One to two years later, following the spring rains,a sparse [crop of] some tens of mushrooms
appears. After four to five years, they sprout
profusely, growing close together; there are [now]thousands of mushrooms on all the trees, and thewhole scene is called a red mountain (hongshan).
After ten years or so, the trees decay and themountains are left bare. In a short space of time,
the people’s insatiable greed for quick profit hascaused the decay and rot of timber [which once
covered] mountains and peaks shaded from thesun by misty vapours, and in the worst affected
places even firewood gathering and grass cutting
have become impossible.
It is the same
throughout the county.... Merchants gain profit
from [shipping the mushrooms] to Jiangsu andZhejiang.4
Prior to the arrival of the Han, the Lisu and otherswidden cultivators did forage for fungi on fallen trees foruse in trade, but the quantities gathered were minimal, andthey never practised the type of technique described here.
The high sale value of mushrooms on the great commercial
markets in Jiangsu and Zhejiang was what led the Han
Page 9

immigrants to engage in intensive cultivation without regard
for the environment. But production could only besustained for a decade or so, and the outcome, as elsewhere,
was denuded mountains and soil erosion. For swidden
cultivators, the outright destruction of their environment
threatened their very livelihoods, for it meant a loss of theirhunting and grazing grounds, as well as a reduction in the
total area available for slash and burn agriculture.
We can be certain that such destruction was welladvanced in Beisheng Aboriginal Department, for justbefore the uprising, Lisu there burned down the huts ofZhejiang immigrants who had been growing mushrooms onland illicitly acquired through a dian transaction from a tumu
named Li Chaogui in 1818.
Apart from the details, there may appear to be nothing
startlingly new in this story as told by Takeuchi. It is wellknown that the expansion of commercial agriculture into
virgin hill land by Han settlers created deforestation and soil
erosion. But I suggest that it does have significance for
ethno-history. Degradation of the environment by Han
settlers made it impossible for non-Han swidden cultivators
to maintain their customary modes of production: they either
had to adopt sedentary agriculture and assimilate to Han
culture, or move on in search of new land where they could
retain their ethnic identity. Over the past 300 years, theLisu have been continually forced to migrate south fromtheir original base to the Nujiang River, the Sino-Burmese
border area, and even as far away as northern Thailand.
This attests to their persistent desire for an independent
lifestyle.
In conclusion, Takeuchi says, “mass scale colonizationby the Han from the eighteenth century not only createdtension with the cultivators on the plains, such as Tai
peoples who practised agriculture on valley floors along the
Jinsha River. It also dealt a blow to the livelihood of theLisu, who relied on swidden agriculture and hunting,because commercial cultivation on hill land resulted in theaccelerated degradation of the environment. In this way,
the history of minority peoples cannot possibly be unrelated
to the Han-centric history of China. On the reverse side,social change among the minority peoples persuasively
demonstrates the special characteristics of mid-Qing
Chinese society, which spawned a huge surplus populationand mass migration to border areas, and radically changed
the environment everywhere.”5 Perhaps we need to follow
Takeuchi’s suggestion, and pay more attention to the ethnic
side of the history of environmental degradation in China.
[Next installment: “Traditional Practices of Non-Han
Swidden Cultivators for the Protection of Forests.”
Forthcoming in the Spring 1995 issue of CEHN.]REFERENCES
1. For more information on the Lisu, see Lisuzu jianshi
bianxiezu, Lisuzu jianshi. Yunnan renmin chubanshe,
Page 101983.
2. Takeuchi Fusaji, “Shindai Unnan yakihatamin nohanran: 1820 nen Eihoku Risu zoku hōki o chūshin ni”[Rebellions by Swidden Cultivators in Yunnan during the
Qing: the Lisu Uprising in Yongbei in 1820], in Kumatsu
Shū 7 (1992), pp. 276-88.
Takeuchi used the following two main sources, both ofwhich are in the possession of the Tōyō Bunko, Tokyo:(i) Qing Bao, Zougao — Yun Gui zongdu rennei: a set ofdraft copies of memorials submitted to the throne by
Qing while Governor-General of Yunnan andGuizhou;(ii) 1845 Dayao xianzhi (Gazetteer for Dayao County).
3. Qing Bao, Zougao, juan 10 (no pagination). Takeuchi
does not quote this passage.
4. 1845 Dayao xianzhi, 6:3b-4a. Also cited by Takeuchi,
p. 286.
5. Takeuchi, p. 287.

Mountains and Forests: The Historyof the Shaoxing Highlands during
the Fourth-Eighteenth Centuries
Yang Dong
Australian National University1
Shaoxing, in northern Zhejiang, has been developing
as a densely populated economic core area since the twelfth
century. Broadly speaking, the region comprises two
distinct geographical components: a river-drained plain, and,to the south of it, a mountainous area. In some Japanesescholarship, water control is considered the most importantfactor in the evolution of Shaoxing’s agricultural landscape,and hence, in the high level of its pre-modern economic
development.2 My research, however, is concerned with
Shaoxing people’s contact with their highlands, and theresulting destruction of the woodlands, a theme missing
from the existing scholarship on this region.
The destruction of the Shaoxing woodlands wasproduced by a combination of forces, and took place over along period.
Some tracts of forest fell victim toenvironmental abuse quite early; others were well preserved
under the management of private estates until the fourteenth
century, when dramatic changes took place in thesocio-economic order of the Shaoxing highlands. This
research seeks to establish the linkage between theenvironmental degeneration of the Shaoxing highlands, andshifts in the pattern of the Shaoxing people’s interaction
with their highland environment over fifteen centuries.

The Destruction of Shaoxing’s Forests in the Last 1,000
years
At the turn of the nineteenth century, two things
especially struck Western missionaries and travellers in
China: the poverty-ridden rural society, and the myriad hills
bare of trees. The impoverished vegetation of the Shaoxing
highlands is reflected in the centuries-old saying: “Shaoxing
has hills but no firewood, water but no fish, and men but norighteousness.”3 The environmental degradation of the
Shaoxing highlands has been a complex process enmeshedwith numerous other developments, both local and external.
Three factors in particular have been responsible fordestroying Shaoxing’s highland forests: commercial logging,the introduction of American food crops, and what may becalled the “ecological despotism” of the late imperial state.
1. Commercial logging. This can be traced back at least
to the Southern Song dynasty, for it is mentioned in a text by
the poet Lu You (1125-1210), a native of Shaoxing. The
passage in question contains Lu’s instructions to his
descendants not to plant more than “a few tens of trees”
around his tomb. Lu claims that in the centuries since trees
were planted near the tombs of his distant ancestors, “adense forest sprawling up hills and down valleys” haddeveloped. Unfortunately, however, “later generations
have misbehaved by logging trees for trade.” In putting
limits on the afforestation to be carried out around his own
tomb, Lu was anticipating that such misbehaviour would
continue. He was motivated partly by concern that his
family’s “virtue” would be “stained” by the disputes thatwould occur if the family attempted to prohibit logging, andpartly by the desire “not to tempt my descendants into
unfilial behaviour.”It may be a mistake to assume that, at this stage,
ecological damage was not as serious in the minds of theélite as the decline of morality.
One of Lu’s
contemporaries, Wei Xian, commented as follows on thesoil erosion that had resulted from the extensive commercial
logging on steep slopes in the Siming Mountains:
The Siming Mountains.... afford the beauty of
seclusion amidst a thousand peaks. In the past,
giant trees stood in dense forests there; valleys
stretching along the streams were covered bydense bamboo thickets. Although floodwaters
could burst forth suddenly and flow down [thehillsides] rapidly, little soil was washed away
because it was well fixed by the roots of trees.
Accordingly, there was little sediment depositedby the water, and dredging [channels and lakes]
was quite easy. In recent years, however, as theprice of timber has gone up, [people] carrying
axes have been frequenting the mountains, [insearch of timber]. Few hills have not been
denuded, and all the bamboo thickets on thestream flats have also been slashed down.
During the flood season, torrents rush down
fiercely because there are no trees to intercept
them. Because there is no turf shrouding the soil,
the top soil is washed down with the floods into
the valleys.... The deposit fills the beds of thecreeks, so that the fords of early times haveturned into dry land.”2. “Ecological despotism.” This was a characteristic ofgovernment policy in so far as it affected the Shaoxing
highlands in the Ming and Qing periods (1368-1911). The
government drained resources substantially from thehighlands, and took little or no responsibility for restoring
the highland environment.
For example, several
commissioners specially charged to “supervise military men
and civilians for timber logging” were dispatched toZhejiang (as well as Sichuan, Jiangxi, and Hunan) in 1407.
The Jiajing reign (1522-66) saw the creation of somelong-term central government posts for “logging
commissars”, whose sole responsibility was to direct thelogging campaigns. The massive logging was renewed in
the early Qing.4 According to gazetteer records, it haddevastating effects in the target areas, including Shaoxing.
Meanwhile, local governments also imposed heavy levies offuel wood on local residents in order to meet various needs,
such as firing bricks for city walls and watch-towers.
In addition, high government taxation of hill lands
made the owners indifferent to the state of the vegetation on
the hills. The hill taxes were quite light at the beginning of
the Ming; heavy taxes began to be imposed on hill-lands
from the mid-Ming on. In Sheng county, for instance, thegovernment imposed upon all those who owned hill lands ahill-land tax assessed according to the area of their rice
paddy holdings. Thus many farmers tried as hard as
possible to escape the taxes by falsely transferring theownership of their hill lands to people who had tax
exemption privileges. Some who failed to avoid the levies
simply abandoned their hill lands. It is possible that before
they gave up their control over the hill lands, they carriedout a depletive extraction of all the hill lands’ economicallyvaluable resources. The hill lands then reverted to waste.
On several occasions, the local government interferedwith property rights over private woods. When natural
disasters were unexpectedly prolonged, and the local
government had therefore run out of its reserves of famine
relief grain, it ordered that all privately owned woods, lakes
and hills be opened to the free use of the public. Suchorders undoubtedly encouraged environmental abuse by theowners, who promptly cut all the trees and gathered
everything of economic value from their reed grounds andwoods before handing the land over to the famine victims.
The woods were further damaged by the “free riders”, whowere not brought to account for their actions. The
authorities did pay the owners some rent for their reed-beds
Page 11

and woodlands, but the money hardly compensated for theenvironmental damage.
3. The introduction of American food crops. This dealt
the last, and fatal, blow. In the late sixteenth century, theexpanding lowland population, encouraged by theavailability of such imported crops as maize, potatoes, andsweet potatoes, began to swarm up the mountains, and tosupport themselves by growing these new crops on theslopes. The environmental effects of this kind of farming
were devastating in the Shaoxing highlands.5
The Pre-Ming Contrast: Environmental Preservation
under the Estate Economy
If the above developments were taken to represent thewhole environmental history of the Shaoxing highlands,
there would be some serious omissions in our understanding.
The environmental degeneration of the Shaoxing highlands
was not an inevitable consequence of human activity per se.
In an earlier period of Chinese history, the economy andway of life of mountain-dwellers did not greatly damage thestability of the surrounding environment.
Fullunderstanding of the long-term processes of environmental
change in Shaoxing requires investigation of the pre-Ming
highland social order and its fate.
In the fourth century A.D., Shaoxing was renowned forthe beauty of its mountains and waters. It accordingly
attracted many scholar-officials and famous literati fromother parts of China to establish estates and take up
residence there.
This further enhanced Shaoxing’s
reputation among scholars and retired officials as a place forliving the good life in the highlands. In the Tang and Songdynasties (seventh to thirteenth centuries), numerous private
mountain estates (shanzhuang) were founded in Shaoxing,
not to mention monasteries and monastic estates.
Before the fourteenth century, the mountain estates ofintellectuals and religious organizations (especially Buddhist
monasteries) and private academies constituted the dominanteconomic and political order in the highlands. Theseestates varied in size, but the great majority embraced morethan one ecosystem in the area which they controlled. I
consider the estate economy to have been a highland
resource-use system, even though it was not operated forenvironmental conservation. The estate economy wascharacterized by a combination of economic activities,
including rice cultivation in the valley floors andafforestation on the foothills. Intellectual activities andreligious fulfillment, rather than economic pursuits, lay at
the heart of the highland way of life. The estate economy,
although not self-sufficient, was little influenced byeconomic forces in the lowlands. The existence of themontane estates posed few threats to the overall stability of
the highland environment.
The decline of the mountain estates, both religious andintellectual, took place largely in the Ming, and has been
Page 12

discussed in studies focussing primarily on the China-wide
shift in the social and intellectual functions of Buddhist
monasteries and Confucian academies from Song to Ming.
Little attention has been paid to the environmental effects ofthe decline.
Gazetteer references indicate that by
mid-Ming times, most of the buildings of the mountainacademy estates were abandoned and in ruins, and the estatelands lost. The monastic estates, meanwhile, were hard hit
by official confiscations of their landholdings during the
Ming. Some recent scholarship also suggests a change in
the nature of Buddhist foundations between Song and Ming.
Song monasteries were essentially private institutions,providing prominent families and lineages with intercessory
services; Ming monasteries provided religious services forthe broader community.6 Paradoxically, while the religious
functions of Ming monasteries expanded to serve a larger
rural population, their economic autonomy and size
decreased. This contrast between the religious functions
and economic bases of Song and Ming monasteries is fullyreflected in the Shaoxing local gazetteers.
Manymonasteries lost their landholdings, and lived on the publicfunds collected in their “service areas”, as well as onindividual donations, during the Ming dynasty.
The deforestation of the Shaoxing highlands can insome measure be attributed to the decline of the montane
estate economy. Although, as has been shown above,commercial logging was already taking its toll by the
beginning of the thirteenth century, the collapse of thecontrol previously exerted by the estates removed the last
restraint on abuse of the highland environment. All
woodlands were now left at the mercy of both timber-cuttersand land-seekers. For example, a gazetteer of religious
institutions points out that once the Zhao Hill Monastery inHangzhou had sold its hill lands to lay people, all the woods
on the slopes were uprooted (it is not clear for what
purpose).
Conclusion
The patterns of environmental change cannot be
understood without an understanding of the impact of socialand economic processes. In the case of Shaoxing, thedifferences between the human impact on the highlandenvironment in each of the two periods (pre-Ming and
Ming-Qing) are so noticeable as to bespeak two distinct
patterns in the Shaoxing people’s use of their highlandenvironment. The shift from one to the other coincidedwith China’s transition to the later imperial period, atransition that began in the late Song, and extended into
almost all aspects of social and economic life in the Ming.
A new pattern of human interaction with the naturalenvironment would seem to have been one additional
dimension of this transition.

NOTES
1. This report is based on part of my Ph.D. dissertation,
Environment, Technology, and Society: Landscape Change
in Shaoxing from the Tenth to Eighteenth Centuries, to besubmitted to the Australian National University by early
1995. Exact references to all primary sources used in thisreport will be found in the dissertation.
2. Shiba Yoshinobu, Sōdai Kōnan keizai-shi no kenkyū(Tokyo: Tōyō Bunka Kenkyūjo, 1988), pp. 556-602.
3. This mocking pun can be traced back at least to theclose of the Southern Song dynasty (late thirteenth century).
See Jacques Gernet, Daily Life in China on the Eve of theMongol Invasion, 1250-1276 (London: George Allen &Unwin, 1962), p. 247.
4. Bao Hongchang and Jing Ronghua, “Ming Qing lanfa
senlin dui shengtai de pohuai”, in Pingzhun xuekan 3:1(1986), pp. 143-55.
5. Chen Qiaoyi, “Gudai Shaoxing diqu tianran senlin depohuai ji qi dui nongye de yingxiang”, in Dili xuebao 31:2
(1965), pp. 129-41; and id., “Lishishang Zhejiang sheng deshandi kenzhi yu shanlin pohuai”, in Zhongguo shehui kexue
4 (1983), pp. 207-17.
6. See Timothy Brook, Praying for Power: Buddhism andthe Formation of Gentry Society in Late Ming China(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); andCheng Guangyu, “Songdai Mingzhou zhi zhuming shansi”,
in Tang Song shi yanjiu: Zhongguo shi yantaohui lunwenji(Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, Centre of AsianStudies, 1987).

Sustainable Development: A View
from Historical Geography
Han Guanghui
Peking University
Sustainable development is an important theoreticaland practical problem. It involves three strategic concepts:
environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, andsocial sustainability. The essence of the problem is toestablish a benign cycle of harmonious coexistence, mutualcompatibility, and sustained development between humansociety and the natural environment.
The various
non-benign relationships — that is to say, the contradictions

and collisions between population, resources, environment,
and economic and social development — did not begin in
the contemporary period. Rather, they have a long history,
and have evolved through long-term, cumulative processes.
This is a law applying to the emergence, development, andevolution of all such geographical phenomena as population,
resources, environment, and developmental problems. It
cannot be deflected by any individual human will.
It is common knowledge that since the first appearanceof man on Earth, there have been both human dependence
upon nature, and human intervention affecting nature.
However, the fact that human society has developed bystages, together with the gradual heightening of the level ofproductive forces, has brought about great differences in theextent of human exploitation, modification, and destructionof nature between one age and another.
Thehunter-gatherer way of life of the age of primitive society
determined that mankind would have a purely dependent
relationship with the surrounding resources and environment.
However, once mankind had domesticated animals, and still
more once it had domesticated plants and thus embarked on
agriculture, a major change took place in the man-land
relationship. Only then did man begin to leave his own
imprint on the natural world through purposeful labour suchas draining marshes, felling forests, and opening up
grasslands for cultivation.
Accompanying the advance of human history, and theraising of the level of productive forces, man opened up
nature, made demands on the planet’s resources, andinfluenced or even ruined the environment, processes which
led to the appearance of many spectacular culturallandscapes. Under the impact of the frequent humaninterventions, the natural world changed from an evolutionof geological and biological nature to what might be termed“human-historical nature” and “human present-day nature.”
However, owing to the intensification of humanmodificatory activity, a great difference has alreadyappeared between human-historical nature and humanpresent-day nature.
Since mankind entered its present stage(industrialization), the man-nature contradictions whichhave built up over the historical long term are still on arising trend, owing to man’s neglect of measures to conserve
global resources and the global environment, coupled with
the inappropriateness of some developmental activities.
These contradictions manifest themselves as daily
worsening problems of population, resources, environment,
disasters, and development, and finally become long-term
constraints on the social and economic development of allnations.
The mutual incompatibility between global
population, resources, environment, and development isbeginning seriously to fetter the sustainable development ofsociety and the economy on one hand, resources and theenvironment on the other.
In the course of this whole process, mankind has paid aheavy price, and there are bitter lessons to be learned from it.
Page 13

It is time to take stock, and to clarify how the present
configuration of man-land relationships has taken shape, andhow it can be expected to evolve in future. This will better
prepare us to profit from the lessons of experience. If wemerely address the immediate problems on an ad hoc basis,
this will be no different from “treating the symptoms, but
ignoring the disease.”
The multiplication of the human species is a mark of
its successful development.
The fact that, while
continuously adjusting the relations of production, mankind
has been improving its production technology and raising
the productivity of labour, is also a manifestation of social
progress. If mankind is to live and develop, it cannot
refrain from demanding the wherewithal for life from nature,or from affecting and reshaping its environment. However,
all mankind’s social and economic activities should put
socioeconomic development in a balanced relationship withresources and the carrying capacity of the environment.
Mankind should not short-sightedly pursue mere short-term
benefit.
It is therefore necessary to carry out numerous in-depth
studies, centering on investigation of the processes, both
historical and present-day, involved in the man-land
relationship. The purpose of such studies is to elucidate thelinks between human history and man-land relationships,
demonstrating the mutual influences between the various
elements which have determined the nature, characteristics,
and trends of these relationships. Through research on thestate of, and interactions involved in, man-land processes;
the creation and development processes of geographicalenvironments; and the elements influencing all theseprocesses, it will be possible to go on to distinguish between
those features which are survivals, those which are still
progressing, and those which belong to the present age. It
will be possible to predict future changes, and their form,
scale, and speed. Such research will play an important roleboth in establishing the theoretical underpinning ofsustainable development, and in carrying out the actual
procedures necessary for realizing sustainable development.
Because of this, sustainable development is not merely
a matter of balancing contemporary population, resources,
environment, and economic development. It also involves
research into the origins of the contradictions and collisions
between these factors. If one ignores the latter aspect, theinvestigation of many important theoretical and practicalquestions pertaining to sustainable development will lackfoundations. In that case, it will be difficult either tounderstand the real rationale of sustainable development, orto predict future developments.
In sum, after the lessons and dilemmas of thecontradictions and collisions in man-land relationships,
sustainable development is mankind’s necessary choice.
The transition it implies from contradictions and collisions
to benign cycles of balanced development represents a greatchange in terms of logical thought and objective practice.
The turn towards sustainable development embodies
Page 14

mankind’s retrospective recognition of the severe ill-effectsof the blind, not to say unbridled, socioeconomic practicesof the past, and a new understanding of man-land processes.
Sustainable development is therefore also a historicalcategory.
Obtaining a comprehensive understanding andscientific evaluation of the processes and present state of the
man-land relationship, and elucidating the formation anddevelopment of this relationship in historical times, areprecisely the distinctive disciplinary strengths of historical
geography. Since the 1950s, historical geographers such as
Hou Renzhi have written a number of penetrating
discussions of historical geography, its theoretical value, andits practical significance. In the opinion of Professor
Huang Bingwei, “To study geography and environment in
combination is to gain a dialectical appreciation of the pathtaken by the formation and development of each.... Suchcombined
study
involves
twointerconnected,
complementary aspects: research into contemporary
processes, and research into historical formation. Neither
aspect is dispensable [since both can serve] to help us gain astill deeper understanding of geographical andenvironmental formation and development.”
This isbecause “The geographical environment is a product ofhistory. If one does not know about its past, one will not
be able to gain complete understanding of its present state,or correctly to predict its future.”

Historical geography in action: two case studies
Since the establishment of the new China in 1949, thestudy of historical geography, guided by correct theory andmethodology, has consistently upheld the principles ofconnecting theory and practice, and making scientificresearch serve social actuality. The discipline has achieved
a series of significant results. Here, I will give two
examples that are related to the question of sustainable
development.
1. Research on environmental change and balanced
development in the imperial hunting zone of the Qing
dynasty (1644-1911). The Qing imperial hunting park was
established in 1681, and is situated in the north-west ofpresent-day Hebei. This was originally an area of richmarsh vegetation and thick woodlands, with a cover rate ofmore than 60%. There was an abundance of wild animals,with some tens of species. In the autumn hunt of 1692, thespoils included four tigers, two bears, ten wild boars, and728 deer of different kinds. However, from late Qing times
on, this region has become almost completely deforested; it
has experienced a sharp decrease in its fauna, severe soil
erosion, partial desertification, and general environmental
degradation. What force brought about such striking
change, and through what processes did the change takeplace?
This, clearly, is a question to which otherdisciplines cannot provide a complete answer.
Historical geographical research, however, hasrevealed the following, which is in addition to the generalprinciples that the combined pressures of agriculture andherding lead to environmental fragility, and that the impact
of human activity can readily lead to environmental
degradation. The pressures which led, ultimately, to aforest cover rate as low as 7.6% in the early 1950s included:
the felling of trees for timber from the late eighteenth
century on; the poaching of the fauna; and, above all, therenting out of the land for cultivation in the late nineteenth
century. Blindly over-intense agricultural reclamation led
to extensive destruction of forests, through burning andfelling. The wild animal populations suffered still more
severely through capture, killing, or expulsion. Thus, it
was totally unrestrained human economic activities which
single-handedly brought about the sharpened contradictions
between population, resources, environment, and economic
and social development in the hunting park area over the lastcentury and more.
During the four decades and more since Liberation(1949), the systemic contradictions between man and land in
the hunting park area have been continuing to develop, andthe situation is not promising. Historical geographicalresearch has formulated the following strategic proposals forsustained development in the area:
1. In view of the characteristics of the minority people’s
counties in the hunting park area, strict attention should be
paid to making planned parenthood work effective. Efforts
should be made to control population growth within the area,
and to relax the pressure of uninterrupted population growth.
2. Given that the pursuit of a purely agricultural economy
has been the root cause of rapid environmental deterioration,
it is necessary to overthrow the traditional purely
agricultural regime, and make full use of the local resourcesand ecological conditions. The policy direction of uniting
development and conservation must be firmly maintained.
Cultivable land per person is high in this area (three mu perhead), but productivity per mu is low. It is urgent tostrengthen the agricultural infrastructure, and expand thenumber of stable-output and high-output fields. The policyof returning slopes of more than 25° elevation to forestry or
grazing must be upheld.
Further imperatives are to put the management of small
watershed and gullied agricultural zones on a sound footing;to extend afforestation; and to improve the agriculturalenvironment, eradicating soil erosion, reducing the dangerof sandstorms, and promoting benign regional
environmental cycles. These measures, combined withrational utilization of the local resources, the development ofa variety of enterprises, and expansion of the ecologicalcarrying capacity, provide a basic blueprint for managing
and improving the environment of this region.
3. It is necessary to carry out rational zoning on the basisof natural characteristics, combining the achievements of theso-called “Green Great Wall” afforestation scheme with thelocal resource characteristics, and following scientificprinciples for the planning and management of natural
resources. Regimes should be developed in which trees,
grasses, and shrubs support each others’ growth; there is anappropriate
combinationofstrip-afforestation,
network-afforestation, and full-cover afforestation; and there
is mixed coniferous and broad-leaved forest. A complete
ecosystem, demonstrating overall natural efficacy, should beestablished.
The case study discussed above has not only revealed
the origin of problems in the man-land relationship in thehunting park area; it has also directly provided feasible
strategies and approaches for improving this relationship.
It objectively demonstrates the special strengths of historical
geographical research when applied to practical problems.
2. Research on population, resources, environment, andbalanced, sustainable development in reservoir zones.
Since the 1950s, the reservoirs (especially the large andmiddle-sized ones) created in order to develop water
conservancy have achieved important economic results inextending irrigation, improving agricultural conditions andtraditional cropping patterns, raising output per unit area,
developing hydro-electric power, and providing increased
energy. At the same time, they have also yieldedsignificant social benefits through flood control,hydrological management, protection of the lives andproperty of downstream communities, and regulation of theavailability of water. However, in the reservoir zones (thatis to say, the areas surrounding reservoirs), daily sharpening
contradictions between population, resources, theenvironment, and socio-economic development have been
generated by the submerging of farmland and theconsequent relocation of the local inhabitants.
Reservoir zone research, carried out under theguidance of historical geographical theory, has taken as its
first task the reconstruction of the basic man-landecosystems prior to reservoir construction. It has sought toprepare preliminary cross-sections for comparative analysisof the process by which later man-land ecosystems
developed. This research has shown that before thereservoirs were built, the fertility of valley soils and theabundance of water resources had encouraged thedevelopment of prosperous valley agriculture with villages
and even towns and cities (albeit not all on the same scale).
The man-land ecosystems were balanced, or at leastbasically balanced. The construction of the reservoirs
fundamentally transformed these local societal arrangements.
Statistics show that the 168 large or middle-sized reservoirsof Shandong submerged a total of 1,540,000 mu of
cultivated land; led to the relocation of over 1,900 villages;
caused the destruction of 920,000 units of dwelling space;and forced over 800,000 people to move to higher land.
The average amount of farmland submerged per person was
1.72 mu, while the average amount of remaining landavailable per person was only 1.21 mu. The results of the
Page 15

population relocation brought excessively heavy pressure tobear on the resources and environment of the reservoir
zones.
Investigations have shown that economic conditions inreservoir zones are everywhere below the average level forthe county or municipality where they are situated. Besides
this, a considerable proportion of the reservoir zones are
now confronting severe problems of population increase,shrinkage of cultivable area, resource depletion,
environmental degradation, economic backwardness,isolation, shortage of capital, poverty, and contraction of
educational opportunities. For example, let us take the20,604 people of the reservoir zones of the middle-sized
reservoirs at Hezhuang, Longwantao and Huacun, in the
Taiyi mountain area of Shandong province, within thejurisdiction of Jining. At the end of 1992, the average
acreage of cultivable land per capita was only 0.49 mu,
income per capita was only 224.62 yuan, and grain
consumption per capita was 104 Kg. Such a state ofaffairs objectively reflects the sharpness of thecontradictions between population, resources, environmentand development in certain reservoir zones.
The cooperative research of historical geography andother concerned disciplines has produced the following
preliminary blueprint for dealing with the problems ofsustainable socio-economic development in reservoir zones:
1. For each reservoir zone, searching and systematicstudies of the whole drainage basin should be carried out,
ignoring administrative boundaries. The carrying capacityof the environment and resources of the reservoir zone
should be ascertained, and comprehensive planning andunified management implemented.
2. Development in support of the poor should be firmly
upheld.
Investment should be intensified, purely
agricultural economic regimes should be overthrown,
policies of preferential treatment should be implemented,
and overall development strategies should be set in motion.
The vitality of each local economy should be strengthened,
and reservoir zone society should be reconstructed.
3. Planned parenthood should be implemented, andpopulation growth rigorously controlled. There should be
intensified intellectual investment and technologicalinstruction so as to improve the population’s skill levels.
4. Attention should be paid to the distribution of benefits
both upstream and downstream. The transfer of the surplus
labour power of the reservoir zones to non-agriculturaloccupations downstream should be promoted, so as
completely to relax the contradictions between population,
resources, environment, and development.
*
As can be seen from the above, the practical value forsociety of historical geographical research should not bedisregarded. Neither should one overlook its role in the
search for solutions to the present global problems ofPage 16

population, resources, environment, and sustainable
development.
In sum, historical geography is not only an important
basic theoretical discipline; it is also an applied discipline
which can render direct service to social praxis andeconomic construction. Whether the research be on thereciprocal relationships between those vital factors,
population, resources, environment, and society and theeconomy, and the formation and development of these
relationships; or whether it be on providing viable policy
ideas for addressing the problems of sustainablesocio-economic development, experience has alreadydemonstrated, and will continue to demonstrate, that
historical geography has an important role to play.
Meanwhile, sustainable development itself provides a newopportunity and impetus for the further progress of ourdiscipline. Only by elucidating the past, and relating it to
the present, can we scientifically anticipate the future, andcontribute to the important subject of sustainable
development.
[Translated by Helen Dunstan]

The Problem of Timber Supply in
Jiangnan during the Ming-Qing Period(1368-1911)1
Li Bozhong, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Translation-abstract by Peter C. Perdue, Kong Jiangti
and Amy Yen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology[Note: The “Jiangnan” region of Ming-Qing common
parlance had no precise borders, but included at least
Jiangsu south of the Yangzi and northern Zhejiang. It isconvenient to regard it as corresponding to what G. William
Skinner identified in 1977 as the “core” area of the Lower
Yangzi Macroregion.]
Before the industrial revolution, wood was the basic
construction material for houses, ships, tools, and furniture.
Western European economic historians have called thepre-industrial period “The Age of Timber”, and the same wastrue of Jiangnan during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Agricultural and Industrial Demands for Timber
Most tools used in agricultural and industrial
production in Ming-Qing Jiangnan, from well sweeps tospinning wheels, bellows for metal smelting, and iron-tipped
tools, were mainly made of wood. Small hand tools did notuse much wood, but large production tools consumed muchmore. The largest ox-drawn waterwheels and human-powered water pumps were over two zhang long.2 Largetimbers used in oil presses “must be an armful incircumference.” Such large devices were not commonlyused in Jiangnan, to be sure. But even though eachindividual small tool used very little wood, the large total
number in use and their rapid rate of deterioration meant thatevery year a great amount of wood was consumed in theirproduction and repair.
In Jiangnan, the shipbuilding and constructionindustries were the largest wood consumers. According to
Yuan regulations, one small riverboat required 203 wooden
boards of different sizes, not including the spars, pegs, andoars. According to early Ming regulations, a medium-sizedseagoing ship was to consume a total of 513 tree trunks.
Shipbuilding required not only larger pieces of timber, butmany different varieties of wood. For example, in building
an inland cargo boat, “For the mast one uses straight trunksof fir; for the beams and ribs, cedar, oak, camphor, elm, or
locust wood... for the rudder-post, elm or oak; for the tiller,evergreen or locust; and for the oars, fir or Chinese juniper.”
Shipbuilders built seagoing ships, grain tribute boats,
warships, and even more interior river and lake boats. One
source describes how in Jiangnan “for 700 li there wasnothing but deep creeks, small rivers and inlets, and countless
myriads of ‘wave boats.’“ There were also many fishingboats, the largest of which were as big as medium tolarge-sized seagoing ships. There were great numbers offarmers’ boats, used to carry manure to the fields.
Furthermore, “pine features prominently among the local
products of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, but it rots quickly inwater”, so the boats had to be replaced rather quickly. Ming
dynasty regulations for tribute-grain boats required
replacement of pine boats every five years, and cedar boats
every seven years, plus annual repairs. The demand fortimber to repair and replace ships was extremely large.
Jiangnan housing construction used very few bricks;
most houses were made of wood and bamboo, even in thebusiest cities. Even by the Qing dynasty, “from thefoundation to the beams and pillars..., only wood was used.
Wood was used for fences and walls, bamboo as the bedding
for tiles.... [Everything in the house] was made of either
bamboo or wood.” Since wood decays easily, houses
constantly needed to be repaired and rebuilt. Also, because“bamboo and wood are so combustible, and there are no
separations between the houses, it is easy for neighboringhouses to catch fire, and the fire becomes impossible to stop.
This is inevitable.” Fires which destroyed anything fromtens to myriads of dwellings happened every year in
Hangzhou. In Nanjing likewise, “the god of fire brought
incessant disaster.” Very significant amounts of timber
were needed both for ordinary maintenance and for
replacement of housing after fires.
Sources of Timber
Jiangnan has very few woods.
There werepractically no woods in the flat areas. “There are only trees

around the villages; they are rarely seen along rivers andcreeks in the fields. Where there used to be trees, they havebeen cut down for tools, or the small ones for firewood.” Itis thus recorded that Changshu “has no building materials forhomes”, and Wuxi “has too little wood to supply [its own]
housing materials.”
In Zhejiang, the western parts of Huzhou andHangzhou prefectures had some mountain forests, but
because of transport difficulties, large trees could not be
carried out whole. They could only be cut into boards andthen exported. Even more important, the amount of woodin this area was quite limited, and was constantly decreasing.
In Yuqian County, “The towering ridges and peaks had
luxuriant vegetation and thick forests from ancient times”,
but “the large pine trunks were used for beams, the smaller
ones for rafters and furniture.” By the late eighteenth
century, “only a few trees were scattered here and there.”
Since local forest supplies were seriously
inadequate, Ming-Qing Jiangnan already had someman-made forests. In the early sixteenth century, there weresandalwood plantations in Jiangyin, and “great profits weremade from selling [the timber].” By the early nineteenth
century, there was artificial cultivation of pine and fir in
Yuqian. However, it took at least a few decades for trees tobe ready for cutting, so this was not an effective solution to
the timber shortage. As Jiangnan timber resources became
increasingly scarce, the gap between supply and demand
grew more and more severe. During the early Qing, whenmany warships were built in Jiangnan, lumber became very
hard to find. At the end of the 1650s, “After repeatedconstruction of [war]ships, there was no trace of large tree
trunks [in Jiangnan and Zhejiang].” When warships werebuilt in Zhenjiang in 1662, even ancient trees in private
gardens could not escape being cut down. Again, in 1677,
magistrates in Jiangnan had to go personally to thecountryside to search for large trees. When they found one,they sealed it off. From these incidents, one can see that thetimber crisis was extremely serious. The only solution wasto import large quantities of timber from outside.
Ever since the tenth century, Jiangnan had begun to
import timber from Hunan and Jiangxi. By the twelfth
century, all the wood for shipbuilding in Jiankang Prefecture(present-day Nanjing) came from these upstream regions.
Adjacent prefectures such as Xuanzhou and Shezhou (inmodern Anhui) were also important suppliers of timber to
Jiangnan throughout the Song and Yuan periods. Besides
this, Mingzhou (Ningbo) in Song and Yuan times imported
pine and fir planks and other timber from Japan. A portionof this timber must have been re-exported to Jiangnan.
During the Ming-Qing period, even more regions
exported their lumber to Jiangnan. For large timbers,
Kaihua and Changshan Counties in Quzhou Prefecture,
Zhejiang were major suppliers. In Kaihua in Ming times,“In the heyday of the trade in fir, the profits were not lessthan hundreds of thousands [of taels] a year.” This trade
seems to have been dependent on heavy capital investment
Page 17

by Huizhou merchants, “and on smooth sales in the Lower
Yangzi.” In the early Qing, a Huizhou timber merchantsurnamed Cheng “was always selecting timber in Quzhou
and Chuzhou Prefectures, and exporting it to Jiangnan.
Because of this, he was always based in Kaihua.” A
Huizhou merchant named Wang went to Changshan to buy
fir, and purchased a Mr. Ding’s forest for as much as 1,500
taels. The fir trees were for the most part transported down
the Fuchun River to Hangzhou and its neighbors.
Mountainous Yanzhou Prefecture also produced fir trunks.
“The large ones could be made into beams and rafters, thesmall ones could be used for firewood and steaming
equipment.” There were also Huizhou businessmen yearly
doing business there. Yanzhou had always been on theroute of lumber exports from Quzhou to Zhejiang, so its own
wood must also have been shipped along the Fuchun River tothe Hangzhou/Jiaxing/Huzhou lowlands.
Southern Anhui’s Huizhou and Ningguo
Prefectures also exported wood to Jiangnan. Huizhou
produced high quality fir. “It was needed for everything,from beams to small implements.” “Every year woodmerchants cut down trees in winter, and then wait until thefifth or sixth moons, when the waters rise. The timber
destined for Zhejiang [is floated downstream] via Yanzhou,
while that intended for Jiangnan [is floated] via Jixi. It isvery easy.” In Ningguo, “Merchants regard fir as the best
investment.... Some of them come with hundreds of taels,or even a thousand taels [to buy it].”
Imports by sea from Fujian were very popular.
Fujian merchants in the Ming “went to Fujian to purchase fir,transferring it [from sea-going ships to smaller craft] at
Dinghai [off the Northern Zhejiang coast opposite Ningbo].”
Another source speaks of powerful Ningbo houses buying
wood in Zhangzhou. Zhejiang’s timber imports from Fujian
were especially great in mid-Qing times, and there is someevidence of government encouragement for this timber trade.
One source claims that half the timber used in Zhejiangcame from Fujian.
Most Hunanese timber came from the western
mountains of the province, and was called “Miao wood” after
the Miao people who lived in that region. Attracted by its
high quality, Huizhou timber merchants purchased large
amounts, sometimes paying thousands of taels of silver for
one lot. The timber was sent down the Yangzi to Jiangnan
in the form of rafts.
Good timber sources in southern China wereconcentrated mostly in the southwest. In the Ming and Qing
dynasties, with the rapid depletion of timber resources in
Eastern and Central China, people began to pay greaterattention to southwestern timber. Wang Shixing, Wang
Xiangjin and Fang Yizhi all pointed out the richness of thesouthwest’s forests. Wang Shixing opined that “the great
woods of the mountain depths would last for hundreds, nay a
thousand, years of felling”, while Fang Yizhi observed that
Sichuan fir was of superior quality compared with that of
Fujian. The opening and development of timber sources inPage 18

the southwest was thus of great significance.
In Ming-Qing times, the timber of Sichuan andGuizhou was already being harvested on a small scale. By
the late Ming, surprisingly large amounts of timber werebeing transported from Sichuan. For example, palaceconstruction in 1607 entailed expenditure of 3,630,000 taels
for 24,601 huge trunks of Sichuan fir and cedar. Afterpurchase, the logs were floated down the Jinsha River. To
float timber, merchants “inscribed their names on the logs,
and then collected them downstream.” In Qing times also,
the eastward timber trade from Sichuan continued to flourish,
as shown by the fact that timber tax receipts for 1727-28 at
the Chongqing customs station totalled 6,061 taels.
Chongqing itself became a key timber collection center.
Guizhou also sent much timber to Jiangnan. The
large cedar trunks were mostly bought by the government forpalace construction, while the smaller ones were cut into
planks by local merchants. The planks were used to makecargo boats which, on arrival in Jiangnan, would bedismantled, and their timbers used to manufacture otherobjects. “Of late, all the utensils of the Suzhou region havebeen made of timber from this source.” Zunyi, in northern
Guizhou, was a major timber-producing region from thesixteenth century onwards. Zunyi timber was floated down
a tributary into the Yangzi, and so on down to Jiangsu. The
outlet for logs from eastern Guizhou was via Hunan, while
those from the southeastern part of the province could also go
to Jiangnan via Guangxi and Jiangxi.
From this discussion, we can conclude that Jiangnan
timber came primarily from other southern provinces; thescale of imports greatly exceeded that of former times, andthe timber was drawn from a much broader area thanpreviously.
Benefits and problems brought by timber imports
The increase of timber imports in Jiangnan was a
result of the strengthening of economic ties between Jiangnan,
the Yangzi river basin, and Fujian province. Commodity
exchanges between Jiangnan, Zhejiang, Southern Anhui,Fujian, Jiangxi, and Hunan were reasonably frequent in theSong and Yuan dynasties, but developed much more in the
Ming and Qing. Timber trade played an important role instimulating this trade. For instance, the main imports from
Fujian to Jiangnan were confined to iron products and fruit
before the Ming, but the trade later increased greatly, withtimber an increasingly important component.
The timber business also stimulated trade between
Jiangnan and the southwestern provinces, including Sichuan.
Economic exchange between the two areas was very limited
before the Ming, but then large timber exports from thesouthwest to Jiangnan caused a great transformation. Zhang
Han's discussion of Ming markets mentions that thosemerchants who seek great profits go either west into Sichuan
or south to Guangdong, and realize fabulous returns on pearls,jade, gold, and timber. In Suzhou, by the late seventeenth
century, there were large timber markets alongside those forrice, beans, medicines, fish, and salt. Jiangnan exported finesilk textiles and cottons to the southwest in exchange for thetimber; thus merchants shipping Jiangnan textiles to Sichuan
feature in many Ming-Qing short stories. Consequently,
even remote areas of Sichuan became a major market for the
Jiangnan textile business.
On the other hand, the enlargement of the timber
supply areas needed by Jiangnan is evidence for a gap
between demand and supply.
Jiangnan’s economic
development greatly increased the demand for timber.
Since timber in Jiangnan itself had disappeared in the Song,and the timber in much of Jiangxi and Hunan had been used
up by the Qing, the only resources available were in thesouthwest. It was, however, extremely difficult and costly
to transport big timbers from the remote and thickly-forested
mountains in the southwest. “Whether a tree is worth 100
taels or 1,000 taels, it will still cost 1,000 taels to harvest....
Bringing one trunk out of the mountains often costs several
lives.” “Large trees floated on water have a spirit withinthem that greatly affects whether they float or sink, go
sluggishly or swiftly.” “Trunks which are caught in chasms[in the bank] cannot break free. Once the chasm is full oftimber — which may take decades — the whole mass may bejolted into motion by a flood. People downstream compete
to seize such timber as a windfall.” The same source goeson to say that much of the timber which escapes the chasms
is seized by “aboriginal bandits”, who release it to its owners
downstream in return for payment. In addition, themerchants suffered heavy losses through taxation andextortion by officials along the route. These extra costs
naturally tended to be passed on to the consumer, making
southwestern wood extremely expensive in Jiangnan. This
was a serious constraint on the growth of imports ofsouthwestern timber to Jiangnan.
Timber resources in Fujian remained abundant up to
the mid-nineteenth century. Nevertheless, like Sichuan,
Fujian was mostly mountainous, and it was very expensive to
move the timber to Jiangnan, since by the mid-eighteenth
century “almost all large trees near rivers and growing on
south-facing slopes had been cut down.” By the earlynineteenth century, the Fujian shipyards had to shut down
and wait for materials, because overcutting had exhausted
supplies. Obtaining further supplies required penetrating
into less easily accessible areas, which greatly raised costs.
In the early Qing, “the value of one large tree [brought from
Fujian to Jiangnan] was only some few taels, but .... the[transport] costs were 100-200 taels. This means that even[the costs for] one tree are enough to bankrupt a few men ofmoderate means.” In the eighteenth century, one ship’s
mast from Fujian cost 400-500 taels, not including transport
costs to Jiangnan. These prices greatly limited Fujian
timber exports to Jiangnan.
In sum, although in Ming-Qing times Jiangnan
imported timber from a wider area, the imports still could notmeet the demand.

The influence of timber imports on the Jiangnan
economyHere are two examples of the scale of shippingdevelopment. First, in the early Ming, the “treasure ship”
shipyard of Nanjing built huge long-distance sea-going“treasure ships”, the largest of which had a displacement of
7,833 tons, over three times as large as the biggest warship ofthe British navy before the Industrial Revolution. These
ships could travel as far as the coast of Africa. Partial
figures suggest a very substantial increase in the number of“sand ships” plying along the coast from Jiangnan ports
between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. By the
mid-Qing, “the ports of Shanghai and Zhapu each had 5,000
sea-going ships fit to make the voyage to Shandong or
Guandong [Fengtian]; each ship could carry 2000-3000 shi[Chinese bushels] of freight.”3 Timber imports were
decisive in the growth of this shipbuilding industry.
The increase in timber imports also had a decisive
impact on urban construction. Because of population
increase, there was very swift urban expansion in Jiangnan
during the Ming and Qing dynasties. According to Prof.
Liu Shiji, there were 329 market towns in Jiangnan by thelate Ming, and 517 by the mid-Qing. The number of large
market towns (towns with more than 1,000 households) for
which there are firm figures increased from about fourteen by
the late Ming to nineteen by the mid-Qing. Population
increase in the administrative capital cities was also very
rapid. Urban construction demanded an enormous amountof timber. In the case of Hangzhou, imports from Quzhou,
Yanzhou and the neighboring province of Fujian had to besupplemented with wood from the southwest. In 1612, all
the timber needed to repair the Grand Canal in Jiaxing
Prefecture was purchased at the lower Yangzi river ports of
Guazhou or Yizhen, and must have been imported from the
middle or upper Yangzi.
Timber shortages, however, (along with otherresource constraints) put limits on the growth of shipbuilding,housing, and industrial production. Only the government
was able to build giant seagoing ships by using
extra-economic pressure to force down the transport costs.
Later on, even the government could not afford to build big
ships. The cost of wood was one factor in the cessation ofearly Ming ocean exploration.
In the mid-Qing, the cost for a mast from Fujian
was 400-500 taels, plus a much greater amount for transport
costs. A sand-ship at least ten zhang long typically had fouror five masts, so the expenditure merely on buying the woodfor the masts could exceed 2,000 taels. Zhang Xie statedthat in the mid-sixteenth century, one sea-going ship costover 1,000 taels to build, while in the early nineteenth
century, Bao Shichen estimated that “to build one ship in
Jiangnan costs 7,000-8,000 taels.” Qi Xueqiu wrote that“One large sand-ship costs a full ten thousand taels to build; a
middle-sized ship costs thousands.” The rising cost of wood
was the main factor in the increased cost of shipbuilding.
The high price of timber put the Jiangnan shipbuilding
Page 19industry in a very unfavorable position compared with that of
shipbuilders in Fujian, Guangdong, and the lands of the“south seas”, where timber was much cheaper.
The shortage of timber also negatively affected theconstruction industry. Even in the early sixteenth century,
people in Jiangyin lacked timbers for roof beams, so “tomake a house frame they do not use one single long trunk,
but patch together many small ones.... The support of thehouse relies entirely on the walls, not on the pillars; in poor
houses the pillars are not as big as the rafters, but only thesize of a medium-sized bamboo, so the houses easily collapse,
and the costs of repair are high.” In Hangzhou, right downtill the Kangxi period (1662-1722) “dwellings far from themarkets, except for those of the élite.... are made of thin,
shaky timbers; Jiangdong rafters serve as pillars.”
Finally, large factories holding many workers, or
warehouses storing large amounts of goods could not be built
without large timbers for beams and pillars, and many planks
for rafters. The high price of wood, combined with theshort supply of tiles, lime, and stone, made large buildings
extremely expensive. One story recounts a situation inwhich a silk weaver in one of the towns of Wujiang County,
Jiangsu, was gradually building up his business by buying
extra looms. However, once he had six looms he could
expand no further in his present workshop, nor could heafford to purchase larger premises. He had to make do withbuying a small house from a neighbor to give him extra room.
Only after nearly ten years of hard work and saving, assisted
by a windfall, could he buy a large workshop that would
accommodate thirty to forty looms, and thus embark on
factory production. Since increasing the size of workplaces
was an essential element in the change from individual
handicraft to large-scale manufacturing, the scarcity of woodconsiderably constrained the development of factoryhandicraft production in Jiangnan.

NOTES
1.
Professor Li’s original article, “Ming-Qing shiqi
Jiangnan diqu de mucai wenti”, will be found in Zhongguo
shehui jingji shi 1986:1, pp. 86-96. The reader should
consult the original for source references, which are notincluded here.
2. A zhang was approximately equivalent to 3.13 metres.
3. In the Qing dynasty, a standard shi was approximately
equivalent to 103.6 litres.

Page 20

The Terrain of the Commons in
China and Environmental Change(A Response to Peter C. Perdue, “Thoughts
on Chinese Property Rights in Land andGlobal Environmental Change”)
Nayna J. Jhaveri
Clark University
The richness of China’s land reform history makes it
one of the key regions attracting the attention of scholars
who are currently seeking to analyze how institutions suchas property régimes serve to produce particular types ofenvironmental transformation. According to Peter Perdue(1994), within the interdisciplinary group of scholars
established to study the connection between landed property
rights and global environmental change, there are two
mainstream approaches which predominate in thediscussions as to how to examine this key relationship. On
the one hand is the economic perspective which focusses on
the role of individual action and incentives in producing
communal outcomes, and on the other is the anthropologicalperspective which situates the emergence of property rights
structures within a cultural context which encompasses morethan just material goals.
In pursuing a comparative inquiry into this connection
between property and ecology, it is vital to locate aconceptual framework which enables us to draw on boththese approaches, i.e. to acknowledge the role of both
culture and economics (not to mention politics) in thehistorical formation of the rule systems which constituteproperty régimes. For such insights, we can turn to thetheoretical developments in the now rich common property
resource (CPR) management literature which provides somesignificant heuristic guides, of particular relevance toChinese property rights studies.
As a student of Chinese environmental history, Perdue
points to the need to understand how property rights were
defined and altered during such processes as China’s
expansion of its landed frontier into regions inhabited byindigenous peoples. Yet, discussions about property rights
often still revolve around the out-dated and ambiguous
dualism of common property and private property. Of
pivotal importance, particularly in the Chinese context, is theneed to clarify what really makes up a property régime,
since such state-developed generic terms for agricultural
production as collectivization and household responsibility
systems do not slot in simply to the common-private dualism.
The specificity of the types of property rights which exist,
and how they are allocated, needs to be more precisely
identified.
Formulating a nuanced and more complex
understanding of property rights has been one key goal ofmany common property studies.
By adopting a
neo-institutional approach, scholars such as M. McKean(1992), R. Oakerson (1986), and E. Ostrom (1990) havesought to identify the types of institutional design featuresand rule structures that constitute successful CPR
management systems which promote both equity andenvironmental sustainability.
This provides anunderstanding of the organizational format and the rules
which make it a functioning institutional structure. This
literature also broadens the discussion on property byexamining not only rights, but also such aspects of property
régimes as duties, privileges, and incapacity or exposure.
All these form part and parcel of the system of governance.
These rules, however, operate within a broader
cultural and economic context. The preferences of theactors who form part of the property management committee
are partly shaped by economic incentives and interests, butalso embrace what may be generally termed culturalinterests. The territorial expansion of the Chinese empire,
Perdue emphasizes, can never be explained solely in termsof demographic and market forces. The symbolic andstategic importance of wildlands must be taken into
consideration, as Menzies’s study (1992) indicates. This
concern composes another facet of CPR studies, which has
been to analyze rule formation and action within the broader
narrative of social life. CPR legal scholars such as H.
Okoth-Ogendo (1989) and C. Singh (1992) have asserted
that the very idea of property must be scrutinized. Thisdepends on an appreciation of the culture within which it isexpressed, rather than simply assuming the prevalence ofEuropean notions of property in non-Western settings.
Empirical studies of CPR systems, primarily from theAfrican context, focus on this cultural meaning of land, andthe consequent distribution of political legitimacy forexercising control over this resource (see S. Berry 1992, P.
Peters 1992, and P. Shipton and M. Goheen 1992).
In China studies, this consideration of ideology andmeaning is evidenced in a study of changing resource accessrights in southwestern China by N. Menzies and N. Peluso(1991). Menzies and Peluso stress that the way in which
the public interest is constructed both at the national andlocal level will determine the distribution of benefits andresponsibilities which form the natural resource
management system. Valuable for gaining insight on this
aspect are the methods and findings of research by A.
Anagnost, J. Oi, and H. Siu. These scholars have explored
how the organizational and ideological power of the state
has been negotiated at various localities through the use ofboth subtle and overt political and cultural tactics drawn andinterpreted from traditional methods.
Progress in the study of the formation and constitutionof property régimes is gaining momentum. What is mostlacking in CPR studies, and is the central interest of CPR
scholars, is an understanding of how particular types ofproperty régime produce particular kinds of impact on theenvironment. The CPR research has largely developed

within disciplines such as history, government, andanthropology. The specific linkage of property withenvironmental transformations has only commenced
recently, and has occurred largely within geography. For
example, the innovative work of Emel, Roberts and Sauri(1992) looks at how the substantive structure of law andrules governing groundwater use in the southwestern UnitedStates has affected the geographical patterns of resource use
and environmental change. It is in this context that the ideaof analyzing how the terrain of the commons createsenvironmental change comes into play. This involves
looking at how property rights are mapped onto thelandscape, rather like “rubber maps” where the boundaries
are not fixed positions, but rather defined in relation to therights of others (Shipton and Goheen, 1992).
In my own research on common property systems in
the Liangshan Mountains in Sichuan, I am attempting to
examine the way in which differing ideologies of equity (seeKasperson and Kasperson, 1993) enter into property rulesystems to produce differential environmental outcomes.
By comparing the history of such rule systems among both
Yi and Han communities in this mountainous, agrarianlandscape, I seek to discern the impact of cultural values
such as equity in creating ecological change.

REFERENCES
Anagnost, A. 1992. “Socialist Ethics and the Legal
System.” In J.N. Wasserstrom and E.J. Perry, eds.,
Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China(Colorado: Westview Press).
Berry, Sara. 1992. “Hegemony on a Shoestring: Indirect
Rule and Access to Agricultural Land.” Africa 62:3.
Emel, J., R. Roberts and D. Sauri. 1992. “Ideology,
Property and Groundwater Resources: An Exploration ofRelations.” Political Geography 11:1.
Kasperson, Roger E. and Jeanne X. Kasperson. 1993.
“Equity, Vulnerability, and Global Environmental Risk.”
Working paper prepared for the Workshop on Risk andFairness, International Institute for Applied Systems
Analysis, George Perkins Marsh Institute, Clark University.
McKean, Margaret A. 1992. “Success on the Commons.
A Comparative Examination of Institutions for Common
Property Resource Management.” Journal of Theoretical
Politics 4:3.
Menzies, N. 1992. “Strategic Space: Exclusion andInclusion in Wildland Policies in Late Imperial China.”
Modern Asian Studies 26:4.
Menzies, N. and N.L. Peluso. 1991. “Rights of Access toPage 21

Upland Forest Resources in Southwest China.” Journal ofWorld Forest Resource Management 6.

Thesis abstract

compiled from many sources, reorganized, reinterpreted,and used to create new projections and alternatives forpolicy makers. The research analyzes energy systems andenergy-use pollution in Taiwan. Included is a history ofcommercial energy consumption and supplies.
The
connections of air pollutants and energy consumption
through major polluters such as the industrial, transportation,and energy sectors are closely examined.
An extended form of the Leontief input-output model
is employed for projecting major air pollutants’ trends, andproviding emission reduction alternatives, based on thecurrent economic structure.
In spite of all the possible measures to improve energy
conservation and efficiency, the impact of energy-use
pollution caused by large energy demands and minimal
pollution control remains inevitable in Taiwan.
Input-output calculations show the quantity of air pollutants,
which were calculated using established industrial categories
of input-output tables. The increase of air pollutants ofeach industrial sector due to the increase of final demands
are also specified. On the basis of GNP growth rate
assumptions, this research suggests that the Taiwanese EPA
figures of SOx and NOx emissions in 2000 are
underestimated, from 18% to 29% for SOx emissions, and
0% to 13% for NOx. Reduction options are demonstrated(in terms of their emission control rates and possible
administration costs) by assuming a uniform emission
decrease on each sector, and decrease on the three largest
polluters.
Owing to serious environmental degradation during
recent decades, and in view of Taiwan’s policy towards
economic growth, continued deterioration in the ambientenvironment may be expected. To counter the projected
upward trend in air pollution levels, a balanced
economic-environmental plan is needed now which will
limit emissions while allowing for some positive economic
growth, probably at a lower rate than currently envisaged by
the Taiwan government (7%). This research recommends
a 6% GNP growth rate annually during 1989-2000, while
decreasing the quantities of SOx and NOx by 7.8% and8.3% respectively in the year 2000.

Sustainable Development for Taiwan: Influences ofEnergy and Energy-Use Pollution

Submission and Subscription Information

Oakerson, R.J. 1986. “A Model for the Analysis of
Common Property Problems.”
Proceedings of theConference on Common Property Resource Management.
National Academy Press.
Oi, Jean. 1989. State and Peasantry in Contemporary
China: The Political Economy of Village Government.
University of California Press.
Okoth-Ogendo, H.W.O. 1989. “Some Issues of Theory
in the Study of Tenure Relations in African Agriculture.”
Africa 59:1.
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons. The
Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge
University Press.
Perdue, Peter C. 1994. “Thoughts on Chinese Property
Rights in Land and Global Environmental Change.”
Chinese Environmental History Newsletter No. 1.
Peters, Pauline. 1992. “Manoeuvres and Debates in theInterpretation of Land Rights in Botswana.” Africa 62:3.
Shipton, Parker and Mitzi Goheen.
1992.
“Understanding African Land-Holding: Power, Wealth andMeaning.” Africa 62:3.
Singh, C. 1992. Basic Issues in the Management ofCommon Resources. Presented at the 1992 Conference of
the International Association for the Study of Common
Property, Washington D.C.
Siu, Helen F. 1989. Agents and Victims in South China:
Accomplices in Rural Revolution. Yale University Press.

Hurng-Jyuhn Wang
[This thesis was submitted to the School of Natural
Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan.
Dr Wang is now at the Graduate School of Natural
Resource Management at National Dong Hwa University,
Taiwan.]Integrated studies of environmental pollution and theeconomic activities of energy consumption in Taiwan havebeen largely ignored. This research provides information
Page 22

1. Submission information. Contributions should besent to Helen Dunstan at Dept. of History, Indiana State
University, Terre Haute IN 47809, U.S.A. (e-mailHIDunsta@Ruby.indstate.edu). “Noticeboard” items andmini-articles are equally welcomed, and may be submitted in
English, Chinese, French, or Japanese.
Pinyinromanization is preferred.
Mini-articles should notnormally exceed 2,000 words (or 2,700 Chinese characters);
the absolute maximum length is 3,000 words (4,000 Chinesecharacters). Translations of scientific technical terms
should be provided if possible. If possible, please send anelectronic version of any English-language contribution

exceeding 750 words, or containing many numbers. The
preferred formats are ASCII or WordPerfect 5.0 or 5.1 on a3.5” diskette, or an ASCII text file via e-mail. Hard copy
should be provided as well.
2. Subscription information.
E-mail subscriptions are free. To subscribe, please send
name, address, e-mail address, fax and telephone numbers(optional), and a brief but precise statement of your researchinterests to HIDunsta@Ruby.indstate.edu.
The hard copy version is available in both English andChinese (full or simplified characters). It costs US$10.00
per year (US$12.00 for international air mail); however,subscriptions in the People’s Republic of China will be free
for the time being. Subscribers living in the U.S. or mostother countries should send their subscription, in U.S.
currency, together with the subscription form to Helen
Dunstan at Dept. of History, Indiana State University, Terre
Haute IN 47809, U.S.A. Cheques, drafts and money orders
should be made payable to Chinese Environmental History
Newsletter.
Subscribers resident in Australia, Britain, France orJapan may send their subscription in local currency (alongwith the subscription form) to their national distribution
coordinator. The coordinators and annual subscription
rates are as follows:

JAPAN:
Prof. Seo TatsuhikoInstitute of History and Anthropology
University of Tsukuba
Tsukuba
Ibaraki(Postcode: 305)
Tel. 0298-53-4050
Subscription: ¥1,000 p.a.
Editorial disclaimer. The Chinese Environmental History
Newsletter is edited by Helen Dunstan, Department ofHistory, Indiana State University. The views expressed in
the newsletter do not necessarily reflect those of the editor.

AUSTRALIA:
Dr Carney Fisher
Centre for Asian Studies
University of Adelaide
P.O. Box 498
AdelaideSouth Australia 5061
Tel. (08) 303-5930
Subscription: A$10.00 p.a.
BRITAIN:Mr Kegang Wu
Department of Geography
University of Liverpool
Roxby Building
P.O. Box 147
Liverpool L69 3BX
Tel. 0151-794-2835
Subscription: £5.00 p.a.
Make cheque payable to K. Wu
FRANCE:
Frédéric Obringer
Route de Laval
77120 MauperthuisTel. (1) 64-03-07-20
Subscription: 50.00 FF p.a.
Page 23