ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the biological and socio-economic attributes of rubber plantation and the decades of landscape transformations it has wrought, leading up to its most recent advance, in which it has brought an end to shifting cultivation in Xishuangbanna, southwest China. The chapter explores the geographical scale of rubber plantation in swidden-fallow systems from the Amazon to tropical Asia, examining in particular the socially constructed landscape of Xishuangbanna. It also focuses on three elements that have long been applied to evaluation of the swidden landscape: land productivity, economic profitability and environmental integrity. Although swidden agriculture in southwest China is part of global humid-tropic landscapes, it is relatively unknown to outsiders due to poor documentation and language barriers. In southwest China, more smallholder farmers are now trying to plant rubber as part of a mixed agroforestry system and greater biodiversity and diversity of land-use practices can be found in both state and smallholder rubber farms.
