ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Shaping Tropical Frontiers: Construction of Rubber Farms in Hainan Island

• In Event: Landscapes of Development: Plural Visions and the Making of State-Building Infrastructures in East Asia

English Abstract

Rubber farms in the People’s Republic of China from the 1950s to 1970s are usually studied as a form of collective agriculture. But these farms also followed a spatial logic similar to that of modern plantations, reshaping frontier space and functioning as integrated infrastructure. To accommodate large numbers of laborers moving from the mainland to Hainan Island, these state-run farms constructed roads, laboratories, research institutes, experimental stations, rice paddies, housing, and factories for processing raw latex across the island. Drawing on provincial archives, scientific publications, and biographies, this paper focuses on the experiences of associated groups participating in the building of the plantation system. Scientists focused on plant physiology in laboratories and nurtured cold-resistant varieties in experimental stations. Close interactions with the masses reshaped the subjectivities of scientists, whose field experience led to a combination of practical field studies and laboratory work. A new generation of domestically trained scientists helped establish research institutes for tropical crops by drawing on the local experience. At the same time, party leaders on the farms encouraged field-based work to launch mass campaigns for the workers, who identified better seeds and seedlings, prevented water and soil loss, and built wind-protecting forests. Mobilizing both elite and grassroots participation in science campaigns made revolutionary narratives tangible and pervasive in construction works. By placing rubber farms in dialogue with the scholarship of “scientific farming” in China, this paper shows that they constituted a new regime of knowledge and infrastructure for the tropical frontier.

Author

• Shiyi Xiang, Johns Hopkins University