ABSTRACT
The chapter begins with a brief description of Yunnan’s unique encounters in modern history with “foreign devils,” such as traders (via the Southern Silk Road), missionaries (e.g., the China Inland Mission), and the military (the Japanese Imperial Army and the American Flying Tigers). It then turns to Yunnan in contemporary history. In 1999, the Chinese central government inaugurated the Great Western Development (Xibu dakaifa) Strategy. By reshaping the physical and ecological landscape of the Western Region, the Strategy has helped the party-state to reassert its power over the people, in particular, ethnic minority populations. The chapter explores how these national policies and global discourses, such as hotspots discourse, created more opportunities for transnational engagements as the Yunnan provincial government formulated its developmental strategies to implement the Strategy locally, based on its two guiding political slogans, “Great Ethnic Culture Province” and “Green Economy Province.” Although Yunnan is resource rich, it is too poor, on its own, to address provincial goals as well as national mandates (e.g., poverty reduction). Hence, it has incorporated foreign assistance into those strategies. The chapter illuminates the unique nature of China’s center-periphery relations, which is key to understanding the party-state’s wariness of foreign influence.
