Abstract
In this chapter, I analyze agricultural land contracts and documents collected from 2011 to 2012 in a number of selected villages of the Kashgar Prefecture. The analysis of these documents and the interviews to farmers and local authorities show that farmers are not protected by documents provided by authorities, which have a short legal validity, while water and land fees are adjustable on a yearly basis, so as push farmers to move out from their land, which is rented out to investors aiming at establishing agribusiness ventures. As access to agricultural areas is restricted, my work is unique in its nature, and farmers emerge as the weakest actors in a transitional environment where rural areas are being reshaped and transformed forever.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Ethnopedology, as a field of study, can support authorities in the process of redefining the concept and value of “land” within their community, as well as in the redistribution of land resources. Because it is a discipline which helps acquiring knowledge on how people understand, view and manage land at different spatial scales in specific localities, it encourages the inclusion of local farmers in the evaluation of soil properties and therefore in the decision-making processes related to land use, redistribution and lease at different levels, therefore with the potential of avoiding tensions and conflicts. The knowledge of local soil is extensive and complex and therefore a prerogative of local people, since it can encompass spiritual, cognitive and practical aspects, as is documented since ancient times. For a discussion of these issues, see Briggs (2005).
- 3.
The Uyghur nation as a political concept has been explored by Bovingdon (2010) and, until a certain extent, it led to the politicization of every aspect of Uyghur life and Xinjiang society. Just to provide an example, the mummies which have been discovered in the Taklamakan Desert and date back to 2500 years ago have been identified as the ancestors of contemporary Uyghurs in order to claim that Xinjiang has always been Uyghur land. This is a historical bias since the contemporary Uyghur population is a mixture of Indo-European/Iranian and Mongolian peoples which started to live together and interact in the ninth century B.C., after the Turkic tribes of the Uyghurs fled from the Orkhon Valley in today’s Mongolia to the Tarim Basin in today’s Xinjiang, because of an internal conflict with the Kyrgyz tribes.
- 4.
- 5.
China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020) calls for “agriculture to be the foundation for building a moderately prosperous society in all aspects and to achieve modernization, by restructuring China’s agriculture sector, introducing improved technology innovation as well as service systems for an effective agricultural socialization”, making of the development of the agricultural sector and its productivity a national priority. See Aglietta and Bai (2016).
- 6.
Especially in view of the yet-to-be-launched BRI.
- 7.
See the fieldwork outcomes here below.
- 8.
Professor Rahile Dawut conducted in-depth fieldworks, together with her students, to investigate the conditions of dislocated Uyghur farmers in compounds at the outskirts of Kashgar. The outcomes of this work have not been published yet, but after a conversation I had with Rahile, it was clear that the lack of any community life, the high maintenance costs, unemployment die to lack of skills and a sense of general disorientation in the new rural environment emerged as key issues among dislocated Uyghurs.
- 9.
See a bit further in this paragraph.
- 10.
August 2012 data.
- 11.
See Wade (2015).
- 12.
Interview conducted by the author in August 2011.
- 13.
The current situation of ideological re-education facilities in Xinjiang can be understood in terms of local officials conceiving strategies on the ground which are aimed at delivering results. In this specific case, the regional CCP secretary, Chen Quanguo and President Xi Jinping are those who define the strategies, and local authorities implement them on the ground with a certain degree of arbitrariness, while the most important point is that results are delivered to higher authorities.
- 14.
See the fieldwork outcomes here below, which highlight how farmers are often forced to sign and to comply with authorities’ wishes, regardless of their own specific interests.
- 15.
Launched in 2013 by the Chinese President Xi Jinping the BRI is a major foreign policy scheme aimed at connecting China and Europe via Central Asia, both on an economic and social level.
- 16.
In some periods in history, actually Uyghurs were allies of the imperial powers. For a history of the region, see Millward (2007).
- 17.
85% of Uyghurs in the whole of Xinjiang still live in rural areas.
- 18.
- 19.
Kreditanstalt Fuer Wiederaufbau, the German financing agency for the project.
- 20.
- 21.
See the Appendix B at the end of the book for acronyms.
- 22.
See the Appendix A.
- 23.
One mu corresponds to 1/15 of a hectare (0.0648 hectares), 648 square meters and 0.16 acres.
- 24.
See Jun et al. (2019).
- 25.
See the below section with the lawyers’ statements.
- 26.
Document related to the poverty alleviation scheme’s arrangements.
- 27.
In many cases, fingerprints due to farmers’ illiteracy.
- 28.
Because one of the my responsibilities in the framework of the KFW mission consisted in writing the final report in English language addressed to the Natural Resource Division Asia of KfW Entwicklungsbank in Frankfurt, and to the Chinese Ministry of Finance in Beijing, I had access to the whole corpus of material emerged from interviews and participant observation outcomes of other research team members, and, after having received the authorization by KFW, I could use this material for research purposes. Moreover, I was in charge of translating materials and interviews from Chinese into English for the communications with the German part and the compilation of the report.
- 29.
Glaser and Strauss (2006).
- 30.
Since Europeans can look like Uyghurs, I was usually taken as Uyghur when she was not involved in the research team and stayed in villages alone or with Uyghur friends.
- 31.
Lefebvre (1974).
- 32.
- 33.
For instance, Ordam Mazar close to Kashgar.
- 34.
Ethnopedology is the discipline which studies the knowledge and understanding of soil by local people.
- 35.
Steinmüller (2013).
- 36.
According to Article 20 of the “Rural Land Contracting Law” of the People’s Republic of China, “The contracting period of cultivated land is 30 years. The contract period of grassland varies from 30 to 50 years. The contracting period for forest land ranges from 30 to 70 years, and the contracting period of land with special trees may be extended with the approval of the Forestry Administrative Department under the State Council”. The contracting period specified in the majority of the analyzed contracts is not in accordance with the law.
- 37.
According to Article 16 of the “Rural Land Contracting Law” of the People’s Republic of China, “Contractors shall enjoy the following rights: (1) they shall enjoy the rights of contracted use, income and the transfer of contracted land management rights according to law, and they shall have the right to organize production, operation and disposal of products independently; (2) if the contracted land is requisitioned or occupied according to law, the right shall be compensated accordingly according to law; (3) other rights prescribed by laws and administrative regulations”. The majority of the analyzed contracts only stipulates that the contractor can engage in production and operation activities and dispose of products by himself. It does not specify that the contractor can transfer the right of contractual management of land in accordance with the law during the contracting period. It does not clarify either that the contractor has the right to obtain a corresponding compensation in case the contracted land is legally expropriated or occupied.
- 38.
I use here “land acquisition” as a less political connoted expression.
- 39.
- 40.
- 41.
The imam is the Islamic priest, and the Sheik is the guardian of the mazar.
- 42.
This combines as well with the sense of living in a territory occupied by invaders and of being B-series citizens.
- 43.
The replacement of trees in rural areas is a practice adopted by the Chinese government as well as by the Israeli government in the occupied territories of Palestine.
- 44.
This kind of situation has been observed in Peyzawat/Jiashi County, in the Kashgar Prefecture, in August–September 2011, and in August–September 2012.
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Cappelletti, A. (2020). Land Use and Acquisition Dynamics in Kashgar: Power Struggles and Social Change in a Contemporary Oasis. In: Socio-Economic Development in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1536-1_5
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