New Wine in Old Villages: The Introduction of Industrial Vineyards Entangled with Post-Socialist Farmland Ownership and Village Economy

• In Event: Wine and Viticulture in East Asia: Changing Landscapes, Political Economy, and Global Shifts

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the Chinese government has promoted wine industry, and supported wine companies to expand their industrial vineyards in rural areas. Especially in Shandong Province, major domestic brands aim to produce high-quality wine and have sought to improve the quality of wine grapes produced by contract farmers. In rural China however, farmland is still owned at the village level, and wine companies have to make a contract with village collectives on land arrangement and labor employment among villagers. This ethnographic study in Chinese rural villages examines how wine companies have expropriated village farmland to establish industrial vineyards, and attempted to discipline contract farmers with incentives and penalties. My research data also reveals that Chinese villagers have gained a certain level of negotiating power against wine companies, and that company managers ultimately had to loosen strict control on the production quantity and quality of wine grapes. The post-socialist institution of collective land ownership has sustained the village economy through autonomous decision-making, and limited the control of farmland and villagers’ labor by wine companies to a certain extent. The case of Chinese industrial vineyards provides a useful critique of previous academic portrayals of Chinese villagers as "individualized," "uprooted from the collective," and "politically passive."

Author

• Kiho Kim, University of Chicago