Abstract
Since the turn of the century, the state in China has systematically increased its control over the grasslands on the High Plateau and animal husbandry in general. The growing centralisation and industrialisation of animal husbandry enables the exploitation of this resource and its transformation from a local product to a commodity available country-wide. After the mass urbanisation of grassland areas and sedentarisation of the pastoralists during the last two decades, it is easier for the state to step in and take control of the livestock industry. This trend started with the promotion of cooperative herding and is now expanding through the establishment of large industrial parks where agricultural products are processed.
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Notes
- 1.
I would like to express my gratitute to all the informants and research assistants who helped provide the information used in this paper and whose names, for security reasons, cannot be listed here. I would also like to thank Yonten Nyima for sharing his insights on this topic.
This paper is an outcome of the project “Balancing the Interests of the State and Its Internal Others” funded through the Lumina Quaeruntur fellowship of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The research was also supported by the research platform of the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences “Power and Strategies of Social and Political Order”.
- 2.
Interview with a member of a cooperative in Ganzi, July 2023.
During the establishment of people’s communes in the 1950s, similar rhetorrics as in the twenty-first century were used to persuade the pastoral population to participate. “Enter voluntarily and leave freely” was one of the mottos promising freedom to take own decisions (see Weiner, 2012).
- 3.
- 4.
Interview with Zeku County official, May 2019.
- 5.
According to the China Statistical Yearbook (2018), the average annual income in rural Qinghai was 9462 RMB.
- 6.
Interview with a member of the Zeku Department of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, July 2023.
- 7.
Interview with Zeku County official, May 2019.
- 8.
Report by the Qinghai Province government on 25 April 2023. Another report from 25 May 2023 states that the number of animal husbandry cooperatives in Zeku county is 104 (Qinghai news, 2023). An official from the Zeku Department of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry estimated the number of local cooperatives to be approximately 130 (interview July 2023).
- 9.
Interview with a member of the Huankeri cooperative, July 2023.
- 10.
Interview with a member of the Zeku Department of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, July 2023.
- 11.
22 provincial-level key poverty alleviation ecological animal husbandry cooperatives were declared in Qinghai in 2022 (People’s Daily, 2022).
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Ptáčková, J. (2024). Centralisation of Livestock and Grassland Management Through Cooperatives in Tibetan Pastoral Areas of Qinghai, People’s Republic of China. In: Degen, A.A., Dana, LP. (eds) Lifestyle and Livelihood Changes Among Formerly Nomadic Peoples. Ethnic and Indigenous Business Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51142-4_10
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