ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the consequences of variations and changes in views of nature in China over the past century. Much of the argument has two broad goals. The first is to document some of the variations in views of nature that were available to people in the late Qing. The second is to suggest some of the ways in which three separate waves of globalization added yet still further variants, but without ever eliminating the earlier ideas. The major globalization of this positive view of nature took far longer in China than the globalization of the view based on science, development and modernity. The multiplicity of sources of power in the centre/edge view or in the more complexly interwoven spaces of ethnic diversity in China form what Carol Crumley calls heterarchies. The continuation of multiple visions of and adaptations to nature matters because working across the boundaries among them is inherent to such a view of the world.
