ABSTRACT

The struggle to control resources is a key factor in the articulation between local societies and larger entities. In particular, the extraction of surplus from rural areas by the state and transnational capital is contingent upon penetrating, dismantling, and transforming structures capable of maintaining local natural resources. Based on fieldwork over a twelve-year period, this chapter uses villagebased case studies to show how privatization and deregulation in China have permitted the exploitation of labor and resources. The apparent success of the contemporary rural China model relies on drawing down communal capital. The severe ecological consequences of this practice challenge the Chinese version of the triumphalist argument outlined in Peet and Watts’s introduction, and raises questions about post-socialist transitions, market reforms, and their sustainability. It also demonstrates the power of a political ecological analysis in a socialist context: changes in political economy and patterns of resource use explain increases in environmental degradation (Blaikie 1985).