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| ECONOMIC REFORM AND THE CHINESE COMMONS: A TALE OF THREE VILLAGES |
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Reference |
| Banks, Tony J. 2000. "Economic Reform and the Chinese Commons: A Tale of Three Villages." Presented at "Constituting the Commons: Crafting Sustainable Commons in the New Millenium", the Eighth Annual Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, May 31-June 4. Link: http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/archive/00000565/ |
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Introduction to the Institution |
| In china collective action at the village level is a continuing phenomenon, although the household responsibility system firmly established the household farm as the basis of Chinese agriculture. Village governments and informal groups of households provide the institutional basis for collective action. In the area of Altay, pastoralism still forms an important source of livelihood in Altay, with the pastoral population constituting some 22% of its total population of 550,000 people. Pastures are used on a seasonal basis. The typical migratory pattern is between summer pastures in the Altay mountains, and winter pasture in the expansive Junggar Basin. |
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Rules for Management
of the Institution |
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(a) Boundary Rules |
| Spacial Boundaries: This case studies three villages, a mountain-based Mongolian village Kom and two plateau-based Kazak villages Ak Tubeq and Sarkum, in the area of Altay Prefecture in northern Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The boundaries of all the seasonal pastures of the case study villages are clearly defined, usually by natural formations such as streams and forests. Their location is common knowledge amongst pastoralists and they are also formally recorded on the county’s grassland allocation maps. Village boundaries tend to be well monitored and enforced. During the season of use, pastoralists, particularly those with pasture close to their village’s boundaries, are able to monitor and enforce village boundaries with little effort. The greatest potential threat is the out-of-season use of village spring-autumn and winter pastures10 by pastoralists or agriculturists from other villages. However, villages have derived a simple but effective way of dealing with such threats. They pay one or several of their households to remain in such pastures all year round to ‘protect’ them from encroachment. Social Boundaries Not mentioned |
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(b) Governance
rules |
| A village committee typically comprises of a Communist Party secretary, the village leader and (sometimes) one or more deputy village leaders. In each major village pasture, during its season of use, a leader or deputy leader is typically present and provides governance in the field. General time-bands for the movement of livestock between different major seasonal pastures have been set by the Buerqin County Animal Husbandry Bureau (AHB) in conjunction with district governments. However, village committees have some discretionary power to vary movement times in accordance with weather conditions. |
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(c) Resource Allocation |
| The most critical, and closely monitored and enforced, seasonal movement is the departure of livestock from their winter base during spring. Their timely departure is required for the protection of village cutting lands and croplands, with are unfenced13. The timing of other movements between pastures is generally dependent on weather and snow conditions and ultimately governed by the leader in the field. Village leaders are ultimately responsible for monitoring and enforcing rules regarding the timing of movements. Some allowance is made for exceptional family circumstances, such as sickness or death, but otherwise village leaders will warn non-complying households and, if this is not successful, impose fines on them. Informal rules in all three case study villages allow the temporary herding of livestock, big and small, over other villages’ and groups’ pastures during movements between seasonal pastures31 or in order to access watering points32. More generally, it is usually acceptable for large livestock to graze freely irrespective of village or group pasture boundaries. |
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Conflict Resolution Mechanism |
| The village leader plays the role of the arbitration of disputes. In all three case study communities, disputes between households or groups of households over use rights to cutting land or pasture are uncommon. When a dispute does occur, and the parties involved can not themselves resolve the matter, village leaders will mediate. Given that their mediation nearly always leads to the satisfactory resolution of disputes, pastoralists’ recourse to more formal arbitration processes provided for by law, such as the presentation of the case to the local AHB or People’s Court, is very rare. |
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Problems Faced by Institution |
| Pasture degradation has been an increasing problem, particularly in spring-autumn pasture, where urban populations and agricultural settlements also tend to be concentrated |
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Changes in the Institution over time |
| Pastoral household settlement constitutes the core of the state’s current pastoral development strategy. Settlement entails the construction of irrigated land for pastoral households, on which they grow artificial pasture, fodder and food crops. By the end of 1997, over 60% of the pastoral households in Altay had been ‘settled’. Settlement has generally reduced the demands on, and duration of use of, winter pasture. But the livestock of most settled households still utilize summer and spring-autumn pasture, if not winter pasture as well. Grazing pressure on all pastures has increased considerably over the last half century, with livestock numbers and sheep-equivalents rising some seven and six-fold respectively between 1949 and 1997 |
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Country |
| China |
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Region |
| The general area in which the study has been conducted is Altay Prefecture in northern Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (hereafter referred to as Altay and Xinjiang respectively). Pastoralism still forms an important source of livelihood in Altay, with the pastoral population constituting some 22% of its total population of 550,000 people. Pastures are used on a seasonal basis. The typical migratory pattern is between summer pastures in the Altay mountains, and winter pasture in the expansive Junggar Basin. Typically, a village’s summer and winter pastures lie about 160 kilometres apart. Spring-autumn pasture lies in the foothills and gently sloping lands in-between |
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