Beyond Great Walls: Environment, Identity, and Development on the Chinese Grasslands of Inner Mongolia (review)

Dee Mack Williams' Beyond Great Walls: Environment, Identity, and Development on the Chinese Grasslands of Inner Mongolia will appeal to diverse categories of readers: ethnographers and anthropologists, environmental historians, economic and social historians who focus on the post-collectivization era in China, theorists in the field of comparative pastoral nomadism, and any reader interested in a case study of Han Chinese-ethnic minority relations.

This book is both a village-level ethnography of one grasslands community in eastern Inner Mongolia (Nasihan Township) and an in-depth analysis of the ways in which state-imposed policies have engendered severe environmental consequences in a traditionally pastoral region. Williams' central argument is that the post-1980 privatization process coupled with Chinese government policies of enclosure (fencing) of grasslands—policies based on flawed "scientific" assumptions regarding grasslands productivity—have led in the past two decades to enormous ecological and social changes in Inner Mongolia. As Williams notes, the "deceptively simple medium of barbed-wire fencing" has not only changed the physical landscape of Inner Mongolia's grasslands but has also resulted in degrees of social fragmentation and economic stratification that were unprecedented in traditional Mongolian pastoral nomadic society (p. 9).

In brief, according to Williams, Chinese policy in the post-collectivization era has sought to eliminate traditional extensive grazing practices common to Mongolian pastoral nomads. Instead, privatized parcels of land have been substituted and pastures have been enclosed through the use of wire fencing in order to transform the traditional, "backward" pastoral nomadic way of life into a modern commercialized system of livestock production. The initial purpose of fencing was to put land aside for hay production under a centrally managed system of rotational grazing (p. 119). Williams noticed during his twelve months of fieldwork that the greenest parcels of land were those that had been fenced off; by contrast, open rangeland showed the effects of desert encroachment. Herders with enclosed lands, Williams found, kept their enclosed pastures free of animals as long as forage was available on unfenced grasslands. Contrary to government intent, the enclosures are treated as emergency standbys, thus increasing the pressure on communal rangeland. In essence, as Williams writes, "the modest greenery of private enclosures is purchased at the expense of the larger regional ecosystem" (p. 118).

Of course, there is a long history of Chinese population pressure on Inner Mongolia's grasslands, and Williams does attempt to fit the past two decades of social engineering and environmental degradation into a longer historical framework. With a brief nod to the Qing period (pp. 9, 28) Williams notes that Qing policies favored the settling of nomads and the transformation of pastureland to cropland; the Qing period also witnessed the massive colonization of Inner Mongolia by Han Chinese. He might also have included discussion of the sinicization project fostered by the Qing: at least some Inner Mongolian princes were accomplices in the ecological and cultural transformations that occurred in Inner Mongolia from the seventeenth century into the early twentieth century. The extension of agriculture into grasslands that were better suited to herding continued well into the twentieth century and was accelerated during Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution: between 1953 and 1979, Williams writes, 21 percent of Inner Mongolia's total rangeland was lost to agriculture (p. 30). Yet, Williams' main thrust is that decollectivization was a "greater watershed" than collectivization for the Mongols of Inner Mongolia (p. 9).

The social ramifications of fencing pasturelands have been immense. As Williams details, illegal fencing of communal pasturelands by elite households, frequent vandalism and theft of fencing, and disputes over the boundaries of enclosed pastures have led to a socially fragmented way of life. Chapter 7, "Enclosure and Changes in Social Landscape," argues that the communal spirit of mutual aid that once characterized traditional Mongolian nomadic life exists no more. Instead, writes Williams, "enclosure competition has soured...