I Introduction

Guizhou Province occupies the heavily eroded limestone highlands of the eastern Yun-Gui Plateau, separating the fertile Sichuan Basin to the north from the low plains of Guangxi to the south. The mountainous setting of the province is responsible for a long history of not only relative isolation from the dominant societies and cultures of traditional China, but of endemic rural poverty and a stigmatized "frontier" cultural identity as well. Citing a long history of imperial, republican, and communist efforts to both tap Guizhou’s resources and integrate the region politically, economically, and culturally into mainstream Chinese society, Goodman has referred to the province as an example of internal colonialism.2  Late 19^th century British trade representative Alexander Hosie, for his part, thought it a ghostly and impecunious place, with "sadly stunted" crops growing on "barren and profitless" soil.3

Hosie’s poor impressions of Guizhou as "a huge graveyard" were in part due to several decades of disastrous rebellions which preceded his travels.4  But such social disorder had, by that time, become common in a region whose relative inaccessibility and poverty made banditry and rebellion an attractive alternative for many locals. Chronically unstable, Guizhou’s integration and assimilation to more "civilized" Chinese ways had long been an objective of imperial governments. For the Chinese state, Guizhou not only needed economic assistance but cultural development as well. Curing Guizhou’s ills of poverty and social disorder was thus partly legitimized as a cultural project aimed at the large proportion of non-Han peoples who inhabited the province. Accounting for Guizhou’s poverty, and explaining its need for development, became a project in which non-Han ethnicity figured prominently. This was particularly true with respect to the region’s largest ethnic group, the Miao. For the Chinese, the Miao seemed to exemplify Guizhou’s poverty and need for benevolent outside help. Accounts commonly referred to Miao so poor they worked naked in their fields.5  But the Miao were compelling not simply for their poverty, but for their tribal "savagery" as well. It was a common claim during the 18^th and 19^th century rebellions in Guizhou, that "many of the Miao tribesmen went so far as to kill their own wives and children before embarking upon the revolt, so as to feel completely reckless of the consequences."6

Guizhou’s colonization, integration, and development has for centuries implied the assimilation of the region’s tribal peoples and isolated subsistence farmers. China’s communist leaders inherited this "civilizing project," articulating it as a campaign for "cultural development" (wenhua fazhan) toward a modern socialist society.7  This chapter ultimately seeks to explore how this campaign has changed in Guizhou during the reform era. The province’s non-Han minority groups still play a pivotal role as prime subjects in the drive to modernize, but the nature of their role and their relationship to Guizhou’s political-economy have changed dramatically. After a summary of the historical and economic geography of the province, the chapter proceeds with two broad sections.

First, it offers an analysis of the economic situation facing Guizhou and examines modernization efforts pursued in the first half of the 1990s. Here, two broad issues have conspired to condition the province’s political-economy: 1) an impending agricultural crisis brought about by chronic rural poverty, lack of investments, limited land resources, and rapidly increasing population; and 2) a simmering fiscal crisis in which fiscal decentralization and decline throughout China has pushed Guizhou toward increased dependence on an inadequate local revenue base. In attempting to deal with these problems, provincial leaders advocated a modernization plan emphasizing the commercial integration of Guizhou’s economy with external markets. Liberalized economic policies initiated in 1992 set off a brief boom in Guizhou’s urban economy. In this atmosphere of market reform, commercializing the countryside and pursuing cultural development took on a new sense of urgency among elites in minority regions.

Second, the paper presents a case-study examination of how the pursuit of cultural development in an era of marketization has caused an important shift in the relationship between non-Han ethnic groups and the project of modernization. With ethnic tourism and traditional crafts slated to become one of the province’s "pillar" industries, minority traditions have been recognized for their potential as commodities. Cultural development has become something of a paradoxical idea, indicating the need to eradicate "traditional thinking" while at the same time extolling ethnic tradition as a marketable commodity, that is, part of Guizhou’s package of comparative advantages. Rather than indicating the blatant assimilation of earlier times, cultural development now entails the preservation and commodification of ethnic traditions which are deemed to contribute to Guizhou’s overall economic development. This, however, has not necessarily altered the situation of increased vulnerability and subjugation that commercial integration has meant for many of Guizhou’s rural producers. Although economic reforms clearly represent a welcome change for Guizhou’s minority groups—presenting new opportunities for the promotion of ethnic identity—the pervasive metropolitan desire to preserve and commodify the exotic artifacts of ethnic tradition can be interpreted as the latest version of internal colonialism in Guizhou.
 
 

II Geographical and historical overview

The persistence of rural poverty

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN AN ADVERSE TOPOGRAPHY Guizhou’s mountainous, rocky topography has historically been unsuitable for agricultural accumulation. Local geographers classify 87% of the topography as "mountains" (shan), 10% as "hills" (qiuling), and the final 3% as "plains" (bazi) suitable for generating an agricultural surplus. Seventy-three percent of the landscape consists of carbonate rocks, which not only creates problems for water supply but, given the relatively wet climate (1000-1500 mm annually), leads to a deeply dissected landscape of sheer cliffs, gorges, enormous caverns, and sinkholes. The eroded land not only makes agriculture difficult but continues to inhibit efficient transportation and trade. The soils are generally quite thin, often isolated amid rocky karst cones, and can be highly acid. Thirty-five percent of cultivated land is classified in the lowest of China’s three productivity categories. The province varies in elevation from around 500 meters in the east to nearly 3,000 in the west, although local vertical relief is always considerable. Only in the relatively isolated lowlands can the climate be considered subtropical, limiting rice cultivation to areas below 1,800 meters.8

In 1994, about 10.5% of Guizhou was cultivated (1.84 Mh). Based on the 1994 population estimate of 34.58 million, this works out to 0.053 ha per capita, or 67% of China’s average.9  In 1985, the figure was 0.063 ha per capita, indicating a 16% reduction in less than a decade.10  The majority of this reduction is explained by population increase, but land loss due to erosion remains a critical problem as well. Geographers in Guizhou estimate that at least 40% of the land area is experiencing moderate to severe erosion, and as land use intensifies, particularly on steep slopes, erosion rates are accelerating. (In 1975, only 11.3% of Guizhou’s land was suffering from erosion.11) They acknowledge, however, that with increasing population pressures it would be impossible to limit peasants to farming land which is less susceptible to erosion. In terms of absolute population density, the figure has tripled in less than 45 years (from 60 persons per square kilometer in 1947 to 180 in 1990). Hill estimates an agricultural density of 17 persons per hectare (equivalent to 620 persons per square kilometer of cultivated land), "indicative of extraordinary intensity, especially considering that only 42% of the cultivated land comprises irrigated rice-land (some 800,000 ha)."12  He further notes that in Qingzhen, in the central plateau region just west of the provincial capital where wet-rice land accounts for a mere 8% of the total, the crop intensity index is an astonishing 187. Here, bare areas degraded by erosion are expanding at a rate of "200-300 ha annually."13

To curb erosion and increase agricultural productivity, substantial investments are needed in irrigation expansion, afforestation, terrace engineering, and grassland maintenance. Given the karst terrain, however, increasing irrigation is very expensive, since ground water is found only at a considerable depth below the surface. Nor are reservoirs always feasible given the porous quality of the bedrock. Diversification in commercial crops, livestock, and timber are stressed as ways local counties can raise capital for investments. With one quarter of the land classified as "grassland," a considerable portion of Guizhou’s agricultural output value already comes from animal husbandry (see Table 1). During the reform-era livestock raising has become increasingly important, accounting for 27.5% of agricultural output value in 1992, up from 19% in 1980.14  Yet there are signs of severe overgrazing in certain counties. Commercial crops are encouraged, but in Guizhou nearly all cultivated land remains devoted to staple foods for local consumption: primarily rice, wheat, canola, corn, and tubers.

Grain production has remained well below China’s average, although it has been improving. As indicated in Table 2, grain productivity in Guizhou was 72% of the national average in 1990. By 1994, this proportion had increased considerably, to 85.5%. Even with Guizhou’s higher rate of population growth, output in per capita terms improved from 60% to 73% of the national average during the same five year period. Grain subsidies, however, remain a substantial portion of total consumption in the province, averaging between 500,000 and a million tonnes annually.15  Imported grain costs the province an average of RMB¥ 700-800 million annually, a figure roughly equal to Guizhou’s annual quota subsidies from the central government.

POPULATION AND MINORITY REGIONS Figures from the 1990 census indicate that 34.7% of Guizhou is made up of officially recognized minority minzu groups (see Table 3).16 This is the fifth highest proportion of any province in China. With 33 different minority groups, Guizhou has the third highest number among China’s provinces, after Yunnan and Xinjiang. In six counties (all in southeast Guizhou), the proportion of minorities totals over 90% of the population. Nearly all (94%) of the minority population is rural and agricultural; cities and towns are predominantly Han Chinese. As indicated in Table 3, Guizhou’s population growth rate is well above China’s average. Between 1970 and 1982 China’s Total Fertility Rate declined by 54% whereas Guizhou’s declined by only 36%.17  Population growth has been highest in minority regions, where one study estimated a rate of natural increase at 23 per thousand between 1949 and 1989.18  Local geographers estimate annual growth rates of up to 3.5% in some minority regions.

Sources: Hill (1993, 6); Zhongguo Tongji Nianjian [China Statistical Yearbook], 1995, p. 60; Guizhou Shengqing [Guizhou Provincial Gazetteer], p. 430; Wong (1995)

There has been particular concern among government officials that rapid population growth has been outpacing food production. Between 1985 and 1988, for example, population in minority areas grew by 4% whereas grain output grew by only 2.7%; per capita output dropped from 372 to 366 jin.19  Although this was during a period when growth rates in grain production declined throughout China due to changes in state procurement procedures in 1985, it indicates what officials see as an alarming trend in minority regions.

The autonomous prefectures of Qiandongnan, Qiannan, and Qianxinan make up the southern half of Guizhou. In addition there are ten minority autonomous counties outside of these prefectures. Combined, these regions make up 55.5% of Guizhou’s territory and just over 40% of the total population. As indicated by investment and income statistics, conditions here reflect a growing gap between minority and Han regions during the reform era.20  Net Material Product (Guomin shouru or NMP) per capita in Guizhou’s minority regions in 1985 was 43.6% of China’s average, and 79% of the provincial average.21  By 1990, the proportions had dropped to 30.4% and 65% respectively.22  Relative to population distribution, state investments in minority regions have clearly been lacking. Only 10.5% of Guizhou’s total investment during the Sixth FYP went to minority regions. During the Seventh FYP, the proportion declined to 8.4%. Minority region shares of fixed capital investments also dropped from 12% during the Sixth FYP to 9.5% during the Seventh.23  Of the 49 counties comprising these regions, 39 depend on subsidies either from the province or the central government. In 1989, revenues in minority regions amounted to a mere 54% of outlays, and on a per capita basis were only 16% of China’s average and 31% of the provincial average.

Given the investment and revenue situation, it should not be surprising that the majority of what is officially defined as "absolute poverty" in Guizhou is concentrated in minority regions.24  In 1990, Guizhou’s population accounted for about 2.8% of China’s total, yet it had 9.2% of China’s population living below the poverty line. Of the 31 counties in Guizhou (out of a total of 86) which are designated as "impoverished counties" (pinkun xian), 21 are in minority regions, accounting for half of the total minority population in Guizhou. According to one report, the population living in absolute poverty in Guizhou was reduced from 6.14 million in 1985 to 2.22 million in 1989.25  The same report, however, acknowledged that roughly 10-20% of those whose poverty had been "resolved" drifted back below the line each year, and criticized the RMB¥ 200 per capita income line as too low to insure that people will be able to lead productive lives.

Impoverished counties are entitled to special assistance from the province and the central government. This typically means special engineering projects (referred to as wen bao gongcheng, or "food and shelter projects") to help increase agricultural productivity. Special interest rates on loans for rural industries are also provided. Aid to impoverished regions has been declining, however. In 1990 state assistance amounted to just over RMB¥ 212 million, down from over 300 million in 1987.26  In addition, there has been criticism of the slow development of rural industries in these regions. Many local officials refer to the san bian ("three sides") problem of rural industrial development; that is, rural enterprises are only being developed next to highways, next to existing factories, and next to cities. They are not, in other words, benefiting the vast majority of the rural poor who live isolated from these places. The use of the term san bian is a deliberate reference to the legacy of san xian industrialization in Guizhou and its san bian principle of design, build, and produce simultaneously. The enormous cost, poor performance, and overall failure of many of these industries remains a significant problem for many poor regions. They contribute little to local revenues, and even though many are being converted to producing consumer goods, they are still "stuck in a planned economy structure of production."27  Thus, poor counties find state investments and subsidies declining, rural industrial development uneven, and are not equipped to generate adequate revenues to expand the light industrial sector because of their economic dependence on out-dated industries left over from the height of Maoist command economics.28

Regional development during the Maoist era

After 1949, the central government primarily regarded Guizhou as a resource-rich province of considerable potential, especially in terms of energy, mineral, and timber production. It was also a prime site for Mao’s san xian ("Third Front") defense industrial relocation policy. The three decades of Maoist rule, however, saw in Guizhou—as with the majority of rural China—a general stagnation and decline in agricultural production and a failure to adequately address the high rates of rural poverty throughout the province. The province’s inability to provide the needed inputs in the rural economy can be related to a broader political-economy of unequal exchange which developed under state socialism in China. Under Maoist regional development strategies, Guizhou’s links to the center came to be dominated by industrial developments which did not fully articulate with the local agricultural economy, and the province survived on subsidies rather than developing a structurally diverse economy. While these structural features conspired to perpetuate rural poverty, official state development discourse generally blamed "traditional thinking" and a "low cultural level" on the part of minority and Han peasants, thereby shifting the causal focus on endemic rather than broader problems.29  As we shall see, this remains the dominant explanation for rural Guizhou’s continuing "resistance" to modernization.

Economic development strategies adopted by China after 1949 were drawn from the Soviet Union and its emphasis on heavy industrialization, high rates of accumulation and investment, and rapid industrial growth at the expense of agriculture.30  China’s investment patterns have been characterized by accumulation rates averaging between 25% and 35%. The overwhelming bulk of this accumulation has been reinvested into heavy industry. In terms of regional development during the Maoist period, the emphasis on rapid industrialization was combined with perceived national security needs to produce a deliberate strategy of interior industrial development. While the party’s focus on interior regions at the expense of the more developed coast has been interpreted by some as a geographical expression of Maoist egalitarianism, it appears that pragmatism, more than any theories of regional social equality, was the governing principle in the PRC’s regional development program. As Kirkby and Cannon conclude, "never in the Mao period is the theme of regional equity per se elevated to a matter of principle and policy."31  Instead, regional development policy was dictated by what was perceived as the efficient realization of rapid industrialization and national defense requirements.32

Initially, during the First FYP (1953-1957), regional development was highly planned and directed by a central government which controlled as much as 78% of state expenditures (See Table 4). It focused on the so-called "156 key projects" which utilized Soviet aid and expertise. 70% of these projects were located in interior provinces away from the coast, and 58% of First FYP industrial investments went to interior provinces.33  Much of this interior development was characterized by the deliberate expansion of new facilities rather than increased capitalization of existing facilities. By the mid-1960s, for example, every provincial capital except Lhasa had its own iron and steel works. These factories were substantial symbols of socialist modernity, and as Kirkby and Cannon comment, "no modern socialist city could hold its head up without its own steel-making facilities."34

The other important feature of regional industrial expansion was the political legacy of the revolution and the continuing perception of a hostile world beyond China. Local self-reliance was a constant theme running through Maoist politics, and was encouraged by the perception of constant danger from the outside. It was also reinforced by the vertical nature of the administrative and industrial system. After 1957, when Maoist radicalism began to dominate the Chinese political-economy, the exercise of vertical authority became increasingly entrenched, particularly at the provincial level, producing a legacy of "local encystment."37  The expansion of the iron and steel industry to over 2,000 state and collective enterprises by the mid-1980s, reflects the fact that it was deemed important that local regions be equipped with all the necessary instruments of self-sufficient socialist modernity.38

While the perception of a hostile geopolitical environment helped justify the idea of local self-reliance, it also encouraged the massive relocation of China’s defense industry away from the coast to the san xian provinces of the interior: namely, Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and parts of Henan, Hubei, and Hunan. Some 29,000 state enterprises were built during this period, mobilizing a work force of sixteen million.39  Naughton estimates that at its peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s, two-thirds of the state’s industrial budget was going to san xian investments.40  Projects were especially costly due to their remote mountainous locations and almost non-existent infrastructure. The cost of laying railroad track in Guizhou, for example, was between four and five times higher than normal for other parts of China.

It is unlikely, however, that san xian industrialization contributed much to regional self-sufficiency. As Naughton points out, the project was highly centralized; local governments had little say in the use of san xian funds. The command structure of the project had the authority to "cut across functional and regional administrative boundaries, an extraordinary dispensation that was made acceptable by the urgency accorded the construction itself."41  San xian projects also bypassed normal material allocation procedures, sometimes skipping provincial governments entirely. Nor did the construction of these industries necessarily contribute to local economic development; few projects articulated significantly with the local economies which surrounded them. Most of the labor force for these projects, for example, was imported from other parts of the country. Indeed, san xian industrialization, with its "san bian" principle of simultaneous design, construction, and operation, reinforced the dependence of interior provinces on state subsidies, saddling them with poorly built, inefficiently managed, and unprofitable industries. Even the railroads became a burden. From 1978 to 1988, RMB¥ 40 million was spent repairing defects on the Chengdu-Kunming line, and over a hundred serious problem spots were still awaiting attention.42

Thus, even though cellularized self-sufficiency was reinforced in various ways by Maoist economic planning, the san xian experience indicates that centralization remained a significant factor in the development of interior regions. Yet, dependence on the center did little for the long term economic development of Guizhou during the Maoist era. Although the central government sought to redistribute wealth in China, richer provinces seeking industrial maximization were able to significantly determine spatial patterns of accumulation.43  The central government’s attention to development in Guizhou tended to be dominated by turning the province, with its large coal and iron ore reserves, into a center of extraction for fueling rapid industrial development and integration throughout southwest China.44  During the Great Leap Forward (1958-60), nearly all state investments were diverted to mining and mineral processing, the result being a decrease in agricultural production and an increased dependence on central financial assistance.45  Ironically, Guizhou’s leaders perceived the GLF as a turning point in provincial integration, and welcomed it as an opportunity for Guizhou to cast off its colonial status. Guizhou was even promoted as a model of the virtues of having been "poor and blank."46  Ultimately, however, rapid collectivization of agriculture and the excessive investment focus on extractive industry only led to economic and political chaos in Guizhou. Unable to implement national policies and disabled by ethnic tensions resulting from the campaign against "local nationalism," Guizhou’s entire leadership was dismissed in 1965 and replaced with functionaries from the Southwest Regional Bureau in Sichuan. It would be 15 years before a Guizhou native would once again serve among the province’s leaders.47

This made the industrialization of the san xian policy, which followed on the heels of the GLF, even more likely to disregard the basic rural development needs of the province itself. Indeed, defense industrialization only perpetuated Guizhou’s economic chaos.48  Between 1964 and 1966 100 major capital construction projects were carried out, and in 1966 an additional 117 projects were initiated. Yet the poor planning, design, and construction of these projects, along with their enormous cost and diversion of investments, resulted in a 12% decline in industrial and agricultural output from 1966 to 1969. Heavy industrial output alone declined 26%, translating into a 47% decline in revenues. This represented a return to 1955 levels of revenue and resulted in a RMB¥ 214 million budgetary deficit for Guizhou. To compensate, san xian investments in Guizhou were stepped up, and peaked in 1971 at RMB¥ 1.46 billion. This did little, however, to alter the dependency structure of the economy which defense industrialization and resource extraction created. Guizhou simply survived on subsidies—which primarily went to urban residents for the purchase of manufactured goods from wealthier provinces and food at deflated prices.
 
 

III Guizhou’s modernization in the reform era

The san xian legacy

Post-Mao Guizhou still displays many of the characteristics of a province dominated by the legacy of defense industrialization and resource extraction. It still ranks third, behind Sichuan and Shaanxi, in the size of its defense science and technology industry.49  In 1990, 84.9% of Guizhou’s industrial output value came from the state sector. China’s average, at this time, was considerably lower at 54.6%.50  By 1994, the state share had dropped to about 70%, yet the national average had declined even more, to 34%.51  Outside of Guiyang, the state’s share of industrial output was still as high as 82% in 1995.52  Besides the dominance the state-owned enterprises, another feature of san xian regions is the continuing low productivity of their industries. A recent World Bank study found a close relationship between Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and the proportion of non-state industry; the study claimed that "provinces with very low shares of non-state industry...had the lowest productivity."53  Guizhou’s TFP index was found to be around 84, compared with Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, all with indices of over 125. Guizhou’s low performance was shared by other san xian provinces, including Shaanxi, Shanxi, Gansu, and Sichuan.

Table 5 gives an indication of the historical pattern of state investments in Guizhou, in which heavy industry has been overwhelmingly emphasized. In 1992, the state sector claimed 74.6% of total fixed capital investments in Guizhou; only 2.5% went to agriculture, while 65.8% went to industry.54  Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, the vast majority of industrial investment has gone toward mining, mineral processing, energy, and military industrial development. In 1992, 50.2% of total industrial investments went to extractive industries.55  (Guizhou ranks 5^th in the country in coal reserves, 2^nd in aluminum resources, and 3^rd in manganese reserves.56  It also ranks among the top five provinces in hydroelectric potential.) With their large investment appetite met by central allocations, these industries have been seeing considerable growth in output (for example, 12.3% in 1995).57

At the same time, the comprehensive development plan further emphasizes the center’s prescription for Guizhou as a net energy and raw materials provider in light of the increasing obsolescence of its industrial manufacturing sector left over from the san xian era. These enterprises have seen almost no growth in output in the 1990s, and are recognized as one of the weak links in Guizhou’s modernization efforts.61  In an effort to make these industries profitable, many have been converted to consumer goods production and moved to new development zones near Guiyang, Anshun, and Zunyi. Yet this transformation of Guizhou’s ordnance industry has also entailed a weaning from central investments.62  Thus, the comprehensive development plan means an increased concentration of central investment in the energy and mining sectors, while the province is given the responsibility of reviving a derelict manufacturing industry.

The impact of fiscal decentralization and decline

During the reform era the redistributive effectiveness of the central government has declined considerably. Since 1980, a trend toward local self-financing has generated growing regional economic disparities.63  As previously indicated in Table 4, the central government’s share of the budget has dropped from roughly 47% in 1984 to 30% in 1994. At the same time, government revenues have declined to 12.7% of GNP in 1994. Mirroring a pattern which has become familiar throughout provincial China, Guizhou is faced with increasing fiscal responsibilities and increasingly inadequate revenues; it has thus taken to reaching "beyond the budget" to generate revenues through extra-budgetary and self-raised funds.64  At the same time, the center’s ability to address regional economic disparities through budgetary manipulation has declined. Of the center’s budgetary transfers to provinces, only quota subsidies are based on need, and by 1990 these accounted for only 15% of total transfers. Over 50% of transfers were earmarked grants, the overwhelming majority of which were absorbed as price subsidies in grain, oil, and cotton for relatively prosperous urban populations.65

Between 1988 and 1994, Guizhou received annual fixed quota subsidies of RMB¥ 740 million, representing a significant proportional decline in central transfers as the provincial budget expanded.66  As indicated in a recent Asian Development Bank (ADB) report, in the early 1980s subsidies financed nearly 60% of Guizhou’s total budget. By 1993, this figure was down to less than 20%. In 1995, 70% of total fixed capital investments were financed by the province, a significant increase over the 1992 figure of 48%.67  By the 1990s, the provincial government was no longer able to transfer its diminishing subsidies to counties and instead was extracting a surplus from them to finance provincial outlays. This has resulted not only in inadequate attention to agricultural investment and rural poverty, but to a proliferation of damaging fees and surcharges on rural households and industries as counties scramble to meet their remittance quotas. The ADB’s report charges that, "in Guizhou, since 1988, the entire rural sector has acquired net remitter status, so that the rural sector may be supporting the urban sector."68  Poor counties have thus seen very little growth in expenditures, while even relatively wealthy counties are strapped with heavy revenue sharing burdens which dampen whatever comparative advantages they’ve been able to muster. The consequences of this at the local level will be revisited in the final section of the chapter.

In an effort to arrest fiscal decline and increase central revenue shares, a new tax sharing arrangement was introduced by the Ministry of Finance in 1994. This shifted the bulk of turnover taxes (VAT, business tax, and product tax) to the center, and created a new consumption tax on luxury goods, including alcohol and tobacco, also to be remitted directly to the center. This recentralization of revenues has in fact been an on-going trend throughout the reform era; whereas in 1980 the center collected only 19% of state revenues, by 1994, it was collecting nearly 58%.69  According to the ADB, in the short run at least, these developments exacerbate Guizhou’s financial difficulties. The majority of revenue expansion for counties has come from turnover taxes, and the loss of these indirect revenues in the rural sector will put significant stress on counties to find new sources of income. At the same time, many Guizhou counties have been able to capitalize on a comparative advantage in tobacco and liquor production. They now face the loss of the majority of these revenues to the center.

During the 1980s, the central government tried to compensate for economic difficulties in the interior by introducing a number of development funds for minority regions, revolutionary base areas, and impoverished counties. In terms of direct aid, however, these funds did not amount to much. In 1986, they equaled only 0.1% of China’s national income, and were being distributed to 60% of all of China’s counties.70  The meager amount of these funds were yet another indication "that the center is severely strained in its fiscal resources, and its transfers are generally insufficient or ineffective in raising the growth of capital investment in these poor regions to match the national level."71  In the 1990s, these development funds continue to be the primary source of central investment in most counties, but their effectiveness remains minimal. As will be discussed in the final section of this chapter, they’re now typically used to cover the everyday expenditures of county budgets, such as salaries for teachers and government cadres, rather than stimulating the development projects for which they’re intended.

Pursuing market socialism in Guizhou

Guizhou’s pursuit of the virtues of commercialism and market-driven economic development should be seen in light of a dependent relationship to the center defined by energy and mining development and the fiscal crisis accompanying this relationship. Throughout China, local governments have been faced with the contradictory combination of fiscal decentralization (giving them more responsibility for managing their budgets) and fiscal decline (making it necessary for them to cover more of their expenditures). The fiscal burdens of this situation have resulted in a tremendous amount of local activity in independently promoting regional economic development, especially by expanding the light industrial sector. This has often led to irrational duplication and regional protectionism.72  It has also led to a flurry of real estate and trade speculation aimed at attracting fast capital from domestic and foreign sources. This is perhaps most clearly manifest in rapid expansion in Guizhou of special economic development zones and glitzy trade fairs in 1992-93. Like neighboring Guangxi to the south, 1992 marked the real beginning of economic liberalization in Guizhou. With encouragement from the State Council, and the appointment of a new governor (Liu Shineng), the province attempted to ride the coattails of Deng’s 1992 southern tour by cashing in on the southern China development boom. Despite the noticeable improvements in the urban economy which resulted, however, liberalization has yet to alter the structural factors which contribute to Guizhou’s overall economic difficulties.

While Guizhou’s relationship to the center continued to be dominated by investments in energy and mineral resource extraction, the provincial capital quickly became the site of intense land speculation. Provincial leadership managed in July of 1992 to negotiate with the State Council for Guiyang’s preferential status as an "interior open city" (neilu kaifang chengshi). This set off a small real estate boom, and by May of 1993, 25 real estate development companies had been established, half of them with external funds. Indeed, with land 1/3 to 2/3 less expensive in Guiyang than Guangdong, 45% of all private external investments in Guizhou in 1993 were in real estate.73  The sudden flurry of construction was quite noticeable to the citizens of Guiyang, who by 1993 were comparing Guiyang to a frontier town where wealth easily comes and goes. An even more indicative example of Guizhou’s pursuit of fast capital is found in the 1992 purchase of 330 hectares of land at the booming Guangxi port of Beihai, ostensibly for an export development and processing zone but more likely as a simple attempt at land speculation.74  This turned out to be a poor investment which nevertheless created quite a stir. Entrepreneurs in Guiyang talked glowingly of Guizhou’s new link to world trade, despite the fact that in 1996 the land remained undeveloped.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ZONES Much of the real estate boom took place in newly established economic development zones outside of Guiyang. These zones were initiated by the relocation of many san xian enterprises, referred to as the xiashan chugou policy ("coming down from the mountains and out of the valleys"). Along with their relocation, these enterprises began switching to consumer goods production. In 1979, 10% of Guizhou’s military industrial production was in consumer goods; by 1992 the proportion was up to 72%.75  Faced with the state’s expectations of accountability, these firms hoped their new location in "hi-tech development zones" would act as a springboard for attracting external investment. By 1993, for example, they had established linkages with over 150 "window enterprises" in the open cities along the coast in order to facilitate export-oriented production and attract investment deals. The first and largest of these zones was at Xintianzhai—the Guiyang Gaoxin Jishu Chanye Kaifaqu ("Guiyang Hi-Tech Industries Development Zone")—which was established, with State Council approval by the 1992 relocation of the Zhenhua Electronics Group.76  An additional three zones were established the same year by the provincial government; they were located in Guiyang (at Xiaohe), Zunyi, and Anshun. Determined not to miss out, Guiyang’s municipal government also established its own zone at Baiyun, and other municipalities and counties quickly followed suit. The entire Bijie Prefecture was granted state-level status as a "Poverty Alleviation Experimental Zone". Then, in 1994, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture was designated a state-level "Experimental Development Zone" for minority regions by the Nationalities Affairs Commission (Guojia Minwei).77

Bolstered by the establishment of this experimental zone in Qiandongnan, the prefectural capital of Kaili in turn established its own "Economic and Technological Development Zone." The zone’s policies, outlined in draft version provided by a city official in 1994, give an indication of how localities tried to attract external investment. Tax policies in Kaili include five-year income tax holidays followed by another five years of reduced taxes (tax holidays are even longer for "hi-tech firms"), VAT reductions and waivers, subsidies for firms which face tax hardships, and tax holidays of various lengths for land, property, transportation, and employment. In addition, the majority of taxes for the first six years (following the tax holiday) will be returned to the place from which the new firm’s investments came. Land rents and utility fees are reduced, especially for "hi-tech" and tourist enterprises. Kaili, which in 1965 became a center for san xian electronics enterprises, is especially hoping to capitalize on this legacy by attracting investment in modern electronics production.

MODERNIZATION AS SPECTACLE The establishment of these development zones between 1992 and 1994 was accompanied by a marketing and promotional blitz unlike anything the province had ever witnessed before. For provincial leaders, Guizhou’s modernization was to become a spectacular event, attracting tourist/investors from the wealthier regions of China and the world. Tourism, in fact, was slated to become one of the province’s "pillar industries," with plans calling for tourism revenues to contribute as much as 20% to Guizhou’s income by 2010 (in 1993, tourism contributed about 5%).78  If successful, such a plan would lift tourism to the same level of importance as the province’s other recognized "pillars": coal mining, hydroelectricity, mineral processing, defense industry, and agriculture. Tourism was promoted as a vanguard industry, opening the way for other processes to gain a foothold in Guizhou, particularly external investment and commercial integration of the rural economy with external markets. This idea was championed by the phrase lüyou tatai, jingmao changxi ("economic trade performing on a stage built by tourism"), which was soon found in nearly all local media coverage of commercial development projects. Tourism was to be the principle vehicle by which potential investors and consumers were brought to Guizhou. It would also serve as a primary means by which the countryside could cast off its "traditional thinking" and adopt a "commercial conscience" in order to solve its impending subsistence crisis. Symbolically illustrating the important role of tourism, Guizhou’s only high-grade highway was completed in 1991, between Guiyang and Huangguoshu Falls, the province’s most popular tourist attraction. When this highway was built, 20% of Guizhou’s administrative village seats were still roadless.79  With primitive transport conditions throughout the province, the construction of a high-grade highway to a site of "non-productive" economic activity represented a significant commitment to initiating the basic infrastructure investments necessary for selling Guizhou.

Ethnic minority culture became a fundamental feature of Guizhou’s promotional activities, both in terms of using exotic cultural representations as enticements for potential investments, and as a feature of market socialism’s potential for rural development in minority regions. Indeed, tourism itself was thought to be ideally suited for these regions by taking advantage of the conditions which made them so poor: harsh but scenic mountainous environments and socio-cultural distance from modern Chinese economies and lifestyles. The representations of minority culture which became ubiquitous features of promoting the province would not only make Guizhou more interesting to outsiders, but were meant to establish a model for the "cultural development" of minority groups themselves, conditioning them to articulate symbolic cultural practices with commercial projects. Tourism was thus seen not simply as a propaganda and marketing tool for Guizhou, but also as a process of development and integration encouraging minority regions to become more modern.

The most visible signs of Guizhou’s modernization-as-spectacle were found in a rash of flashy trade fairs in 1992 and 1993. While these can be interpreted, in part, as manifestations of the local initiative spurred by Deng’s southern tour, they were also orchestrated as part of several centrally promoted tourism campaigns sponsored by the National Tourism Administration (NTA). In 1992, the province held a "batik festival" (laran jie) in Anshun, and a "liquor culture festival" (jiu wenhua jie) in Zunyi. The following year, there was an "azalea blossom festival," while the former "liquor culture festival" was combined with a "Huangguoshu sightseeing festival." This latter event was partly funded by the NTA and was one of five official events throughout the country marking "China Scenery Tourism Year" (Zhongguo shanshui fengguang lüyounian). Guizhou’s selection for NTA funding in 1993 was treated as a crucial opportunity for economic development; "Huangguoshu Sightseeing and International Famous Liquor Festival" became the largest commercial event in Guizhou’s history, promoted with the phrase rang shijie liaojie Guizhou, rang Guizhou zouxiang shijie ("let the world understand Guizhou, let Guizhou align with the world").

These festivals were very large-scale undertakings which combined ethnic cultural performances, traditional crafts demonstrations, and numerous exhibitions of local products, especially liquor. The azalea festival, for example, sought to combine tourism and trade under the principle of yi jie yin shang, zhao shang yin zi, fazhan maoyi, kuoda duiwai jingji hezuo ("lure business through festivals, lure investment by favoring business, develop trade, expand external economic cooperation"). The festival focused on Guizhou’s "100 li azalea belt," a scenic attraction along the border between Dafang and Qianxi counties. Dafang is one of Guizhou’s 31 impoverished counties. During the festival, Guizhou Ribao ran an article titled "Economy Performing on a Stage of Flowers" which described Dafang’s various natural resources awaiting investment and exploitation. Other articles followed, over the course of the week, on investment opportunities throughout the Dafang region. The paper also ran full color pages of advertisements for Guizhou enterprises, most of which were participating in the commodities exhibition. Guizhou Ribao also emphasized ethnic activities in its coverage, pointing out that the region’s rich minority culture made it an ideal place to invest in ethnic tourism development.80

The Huangguoshu festival was an even bigger event. With the extra boost of NTA funds, millions of yuan were spent beautifying Guiyang and the nearby scenic sites for the week-long festival. The festival featured an "International Children’s Crafts Festival" (with children’s performance troupes from China, USA, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Japan, and France), a parade featuring elaborate floats sponsored by various local distilleries, ethnic song and dance performances at Huangguoshu Falls, and no less than seven different commodities and crafts exhibitions. The largest of these was held in the provincial exhibition center, which was renamed the "International Economic and Technological Trade Center" to better capture the heady spirit of the fair. The festival was attended by the head of the NTA, along with numerous central party officials, and a random assortment of foreign ambassadors. It was covered by Guizhou Ribao with four consecutive days of color photographs and advertisements. As with the azalea festival, it also provided an opportunity to print numerous stories on development and modernization throughout the province. The unprecedented extravagance of the festival, however, compelled the newspaper to run an editorial cautioning enterprise managers against the flagrant waste of valuable funds on lavish banquets and, ironically, the use of "too many advertisements."81

In trying to insure their success as public relations events, the provincial government arranged to have RMB¥ 1.85 billion worth of economic cooperation projects, which had actually been negotiated throughout the preceding year, to be finalized during the festivals. Guizhou Ribao reported that the total business volume for the 1993 festivals exceeded RMB¥ 3.65 billion, that nearly 10,000 tourists and business representatives attended, and that over US$ 70 million in foreign direct investment was negotiated. A total of 33 joint venture/cooperation projects were negotiated, a number which, if finalized, would account for 15.5% of all such contracts in Guizhou between 1980 and 1992.82  By 1996, however, officials in the provincial government privately acknowledged that many of these business deals were never finalized. Looking back on the festivals, one official told me bluntly that the trade fairs had been "a huge waste of money" for the province.83  Indeed, since 1993 there have been no more large-scale trade fairs held in Guizhou. Yet, while the festivals were perhaps a failure in economic terms, reinforcing Guizhou’s disadvantaged position in pursuing the newly mobile capital of post-1992 China, they were nevertheless profoundly cultural events, not simply for the tourists visiting the province, but especially for people in Guizhou itself. The festivals provided a brief tangible model of "cultural development" and commercial integration combined with celebrations of tradition and symbolic cultural diversity.

As if to emphasize the disappointing results of the early 1990s, by 1996, tourism too was—at least temporarily—on the decline. According to a source within the tourism bureau, the first eight months of 1996 saw a dramatic decline in tourist arrivals compared to the same period in 1995. A combination of poor leadership, drastic cut-backs in the tourism bureau’s budget, the consequent lack of marketing, and inability of local agencies to offer competitive prices compared to those in neighboring Yunnan was to blame.84  Other officials recognized the growth targets for Guizhou tourism—culminating in earning 20% of provincial income by 2010—to be impossible to reach; it is doubtful that tourism’s contribution will increase beyond 10% during this period. Thus, Guizhou’s income dependence on its mining and energy sectors is likely to continue well into the next century.

POLITICAL FALLOUT The frontier-type boom-town atmosphere that characterized much of urban Guizhou during this time had its political ramifications as well. While it is difficult to assign causality to specific individuals, Guizhou’s spectacular but largely wasteful pursuit of market socialism coincided with the tenure of provincial party secretary Liu Zhengwei (appointed in 1988) and governor Liu Shineng (appointed in 1992). Both were outsiders, brought in to help revitalize the local economy. Yet, as has been the tradition in Guizhou, locals regarded them as temporary functionaries "doing time" in Guizhou while waiting for a better appointment. Liu Shineng, from Beijing, had replaced the popular yet conservative Wang Chaoren, a Miao from Guizhou’s Huangping county. Wang’s popularity derived from the fact that he was the first native governor since 1965. After an 8 year tenure, however, his replacement in 1992 by an outsider from Beijing was an indication from the center that the province needed some stirring up. Neither the new governor nor secretary Liu ended up staying in Guizhou long, however. Secretary Liu was demoted to a minor post in Beijing in 1994 after his wife was arrested, not surprisingly, for fraudulent real estate speculation in Guiyang. Likewise, Liu Shineng was returned to Beijing in 1995 after three years of watching Guizhou’s high-profile development schemes fall flat. Many intellectuals in Guiyang felt that such leaders came to Guizhou simply to make some money in the boom-town environment before getting a "real" post somewhere else. By 1996, it seemed little had changed. The governor’s post was being filled on an interim basis by a Liaoning native, Wu Yixia, and the new party secretary, Liu Fangren, was also an outsider. Guizhou leadership—being largely non-local—has not presented a significant challenge the center’s prescribed role for the province; nor has it been able to develop a coherent development strategy of its own, beyond reaffirming in vague terms the need for commercialization and "cultural development".

URBAN-RURAL DISPARITIES Despite the problems indicated above, the modernization-as-spectacle approach to development did nevertheless have a notable impact on Guizhou’s urban economy. Provincial exports increased 64% between 1990 and 1993, while imports jumped 94%. Urban consumer spending was up 34% during the same period, matching similar growth in urban per capita incomes.85  Yet, overall per capita consumption in 1994 remained the lowest in China at 735 yuan (42% of the national average) indicating the influence of rural Guizhou’s stagnant growth; rural per capital expenditures in Guizhou were the 3^rd lowest in China in 1995.86  Urban-rural disparities have been increasing in Guizhou. Development zones have primarily benefited urban residents, whose lives are already subsidized by the state in many ways.87  From 1990 to 1993, nominal incomes per capita in rural households increased 16%, less than half the figure for urban residents.88  Investments in Guizhou’s energy production primarily benefit urban heavy industries (consuming roughly 78% of all commercial electricity in the province). The other major beneficiary—urban households—consumed ten times as much electricity as rural households in 1995, despite the fact that they accounted for merely 14% of the total population.89  Furthermore, the focus on speculative development in trade and real estate resulted in the virtual ignoring of agriculture’s plight. As agricultural investments stagnate, rural industrialization is supposed to fill in the gap. But the obstacles to establishing this sector remain difficult to overcome.

As the core of rural development in Guizhou, rural industrialization is to be based on the idea of "leading sectors," in which limited investment resources are focused on particular commercial products. According to one report these sectors coalesce into three areas: commercialized agricultural production (for example, tobacco, timber, tung oil, and livestock), traditional specialties (such as liquor, cigarettes, and ethnic textiles and handicrafts), and household appliances.90  The expansion of commercial crop, timber, and livestock production and processing has been emphasized not only as the primary means by which households and local governments should increase incomes and revenues, but as a necessary step in reducing pressure on Guizhou’s marginal upland soils. It has been acknowledged, however, that most regions have not created adequate economies of scale in commercial farm production to make the investments worthwhile. This is officially blamed on the xiaonong jingji ("small farmer economy") mentality which favors subsistence and self-sufficiency. In reality, however, local governments simply cannot put more land into commercial production because of the extreme population pressures and subsistence crisis which they already face.91  Although one report calls for 70% of all state poverty alleviation investments to go to commercial crop production, the local realities make such a plan unfeasible for local governments to implement.92

Thus, beyond the fringes of urban centers such as Guiyang, Zunyi, and Anshun, provincial leaders have still seen very little satisfactory progress in commercializing the rural economy according to the ideals of market socialism. Indeed, the ideals of socialism in any form are increasingly questioned in the impoverished regions of rural Guizhou. On a 1996 visit to Bijie, Jiang Zemin made a point of reassuring the poor households he visited that, "China is still a socialist country." But a group of Beijing reporters covering the Secretary’s visit, upon visiting impoverished villages near Guiyang, rhetorically asked if Guizhou had a communist party or not. Despite all the efforts of the early 1990s, the overall picture of Guizhou’s economy has changed little in structural terms. While industry and agriculture contributed nearly equal parts to the provincial GVIAO in 1994, they did so with vastly different employment figures: industry accounted for roughly 8% of the workforce whereas agriculture accounted for nearly 75%.93  State-level investments continue to be dominated by mining and energy development.94  Rural commercialism remains stubbornly undeveloped and calls for "cultural development" as the remedy have only intensified. In this light, minority groups occupy the symbolic heart of campaigns which call for changing the "traditional thinking" of the rural sector. Despite recent setbacks, tourism has been the major success-story in these campaigns; in particular, commercial ethnic crafts production has stood out considerably as one of the more hopeful prospects for rural economic transformation and ethnic cultural development in Guizhou. In sum, Guizhou’s hopes for rural development and poverty alleviation are increasingly wrapped up in the commercial potential of ethnic minorities, whose rural lives have for so long exemplified the province’s "backwardness."
 
 

IV Cultural development in an era of marketization

As evidenced by the trade fairs of 1992-93 "selling Guizhou" has most succinctly meant "selling Guizhou’s traditions," its liquor and tobacco culture, its harsh yet poetic scenery, and its ethnic exoticism. While the economic benefits of this approach have been questionable, the local social and cultural changes resulting from the province’s attempt to establish its comparative advantage have been significant, particularly for minority groups. While the promotion of commercialism has provided a new means for elites to express the ethnic and regional autonomy of their groups, it has also brought a host of new economic and political contradictions for many sectors of minority society. These issues are addressed in this final section.

The discourse of "cultural development" among minority elites

Cultural development, or wenhua fazhan, encompasses the Chinese state’s twin goals of regional political and economic integration along with the nurturing of a national civic culture based on the ideals of socialism. It is most commonly used to refer to the development of ethnic minority regions. In specific post-Mao terms, wenhua fazhan implies the attainment of literacy (in standard Chinese), an education in science and technology, understanding of modern commerce, expertise in enterprise management, and even an entrepreneurial spirit. But in Guizhou wenhua fazhan has more specifically come to mean the creative blending of traditional arts and crafts, cuisines, and performances with modern commercialism, that is, the commodification of tradition. Cultural development enables a sense of local cultural autonomy and preservation, even as economic and social integration proceeds towards the state’s desired goals of nation-building.

Local minority elites enthusiastically embrace wenhua fazhan not only for the purposes of economic development, but more importantly as a means of maintaining a distinct sense of regional ethnic identity even as China’s modernization and integration ensues. Thus, economic development plans in minority regions are infused with a strong commitment to the preservation of those minority traditions which articulate well with the needs of commercialism and capital accumulation.95  In Guizhou, any activity which celebrates cultural traditions and "local color" (difang tese) while at the same time promoting commercial economic development and further integration into broader markets, is upheld as an example of wenhua fazhan. Newspapers are full of examples. During the 1993 azalea blossom and Huangguoshu famous liquor festivals, Guizhou Ribao ran several such stories. One covered the opening of scenic Sajin gorge by Fuquan county, which had invested over RMB¥ 870,000 in developing the site. The new tourist site opened with a three day "Sajin Minzu Song and Dance Festival," coinciding with the Huangguoshu famous liquor festival; according to county officials, the festival would "highlight how modern civilization and traditional customs complement each other in cultural development." A Huangping county crafts factory was also praised in Guizhou Ribao for making toys to be sold all over China which "combined traditional skills with modern ideas." It was with such a combination, the journalist commented, that minority groups would finally "align with the world."96

"Aligning with the world," in fact, has been the rallying cry among scholars and officials promoting the development of Guizhou’s minority regions. What is significant about this is not simply that it represents national integration, but that it is celebrated by local elites as the means by which they can become modern while retaining the traditions and customs which mark them as distinctive and around which they seek to maintain a sense of minzu identity. State-sponsored integration is enthusiastically embraced by Guizhou’s minority leaders if it leaves open a space for local cultural autonomy. As one scholar claimed, "the question of turning traditional culture into a cultural commodity, and marketing that commodity domestically and internationally, is not simply one of economics, but of the value of a particular minzu group."97  Ethnic cultural commodification, he continued, is a bridge between minzu groups and modernity; the goal is not simply to sell minzu culture, but to develop it.

In November of 1990, the Guizhou Minzu Cultural Studies Association held its annual meetings in Kaili, and the theme for the conference was "Guizhou minzu wenhua zouxiang shijie" ("aligning Guizhou’s minzu cultures with the world").98  Papers were delivered on the subjects of preserving traditional minzu culture and on how to articulate minzu traditions with the needs of modernization.99  A paper by Shi Chaojiang was illustrative of the general tone of the conference. Titled "Miaozu chuantong wenhua yu shehuizhuyi xiandaihua ("Traditional Miao culture and socialist modernization"), the paper first described the various features of traditional Miao culture which were positive attributes for a modernizing society. Because of their history of migration and perseverance in the face of adversity and hostility, the Miao had a "pioneer spirit" (zhimin jingshen) of mutual aid and assistance. They were used to being cast out into the wilderness and being forced to make it productive. This was precisely the spirit, Shi exclaimed, needed to build socialist modernization. The Miao were also very democratic, and valued social equality. They had a spirit of industriousness and hard work, and they believed, like Deng Xiaoping, in "seeking truth from facts." Yet the Miao also exhibited some conflicts with the spirit of modernity. While their high moral and ethical standards were to be praised, their morality of respect for the natural environment conflicted with modernization’s need for exploitation of natural resources! The Miao had for too long been isolated subsistence farmers and harbored a "xiaonong jingji sixiang" ("small farming economy mentality"). Their deep rooted religious beliefs prevented the popularization of scientific knowledge, and their insistence on marrying locally kept the population from being invigorated by outsiders. Shi concluded that these conflicts with modernity needed to be "put in order" (qingli) and discarded. The former aspects of Miao culture which articulated positively with modernization should be supported and promoted.

Added to this message of selective cultural engineering, which was repeated in most of the papers, were accounts of how Guizhou’s minzu traditions formed the very touchstone of China’s socialist modernization. In the essay which introduced the published papers from the conference, it was argued that minzu culture was the basis for China’s industrialization and modernization, and that it provided China with distinctiveness in the face of "Westernization" and prevented assimilation as China entered the global economy. In fact, minzu culture was already more modernized than most people thought. Minzu culture in Guizhou, the essay enthusiastically declared, already reflected the world’s 21^st century desires. "People in the 21^st century will thirst for the kind of cultural traditions we have in Guizhou." To quench this thirst, Guizhou hospitably offered not only bowl upon bowl of rice wine proffered by jovial villagers, but beautiful batiks and embroidery patterns, reed pipe lusheng dancing, the "oriental disco" (dongfang disikou) of Miao song and dance troupes the "oriental choir" of Dong village girls, literature, legends, and more.100

This approach to wenhua fazhan not only allows for the selective breeding of symbolic cultural diversity as the captive antidote to modernity’s cravings, but enables local leaders to actively confront the sense of loss which over four decades of socialist modernization has engendered. The paper delivered by Wu Dehai, an active Miao scholar and former prefectural governor, openly discussed his discomfort with the "decline" (shuaitui) of traditional minzu culture in the face of modernization. Wu lamented that traditional festivals and lusheng meetings had declined in popularity since the 1950s; there was less diversity in the songs and dances performed. Many instruments which used to be around were no longer played. Fewer and fewer people knew the old myths and legends, new buildings used less traditional architecture, and traditional minzu medicine was rarely practiced anymore. As a Marxist, he had to admit that this was something of an historical inevitability, and the positive result of progressing to a more advanced stage of history. But he also believed in Marx’s claim that we are the makers of our own history, albeit within conditions not of our own choosing. This, he claimed, was why "aligning with the world" was so important. The world was increasingly interested in preserving cultural traditions, and Guizhou’s minzu groups simply needed to link their futures to this larger trend by creating more tourist sites, museums, "cultural departments," and stronger laws preserving people’s traditional customs.

Selling Guizhou: cultural development in practice

Efforts to commercialize rural production systems and transform the "traditional subsistence mentalities" of minorities have encouraged the rapid growth of ethnic crafts commodity production in Guizhou. In the autonomous prefecture of Qiandongnan, ethnic crafts production has expanded into one of the most important sectors of an incipient rural industrialization. Yet, beyond the promotions of elites, the process of commercializing and standardizing ethnic crafts production is a project full of paradox and contradiction for local ethnic producers. In trying to combine two different cultural economies in Guizhou—those of commercialism and subsistence—ideas of development, modernization, and progress have been combined with those of cultural preservation. The idea of modernization based on preserving minzu tradition, an idea now enthusiastically embraced by local leaders throughout Guizhou, may in fact be resulting in a new form of internal colonialism.

In brief, two dominant ideologies can be identified regarding minzu culture in Guizhou. On the one hand, preserving "traditional minzu culture" has become important for China’s projects of nationalism and modernization, since "tradition" forms both the ideological glue to build an imagined national community and the means by which local minzu groups can commercially participate in national integration without feeling like they’re losing their local cultures. On the other hand, pursuing economic and cultural development in order to combat rural poverty, eradicate subsistence and "small-farmer" mentalities, and otherwise transform the nature of rural production systems, has meant that "minzu traditions" are only preserved if they can accommodate commercial production and exchange. Combined, these ideologies have generated an environment in rural Guizhou in which cultural development and the preservation of "authentic minzu culture" legitimize a division of labor in which rural labor remains subordinated to urban capital. Minzu traditions of producing elaborate crafts, particularly batik and embroidery, are valued for their commercial potential in spurring the development of a rural revenue base and increasing household incomes, as well as for their "museum value" as artifacts of national folk tradition worthy of preservation. The ideology of preservation, in this case, colludes with capital to fossilize rural modes of crafts production as a national cultural resource, and as a reservoir of skilled yet cheap exploitable labor.101

In rural Guizhou, particularly Qiandongnan, this process can be seen in several ways. The minzu groups of Qiandongnan, particularly the Miao, have become well known for the embroidered textiles they produce. Embroidery was a skill acquired by girls at a very early age, and was used to make elaborate clothing to wear at festivals and other important social occasions. Concern among local minority officials that with modernization these skills would die out encouraged the promotion of economic schemes which would convince rural households that traditional skills could in fact be exploited to increase their incomes. This would enable modernization without losing an important resource of minzu culture and identity. In Taijiang county, for example, the local nationalities commission (minwei) became involved in attracting a number of coastal trading companies to set up labor-intensive, export-oriented textile factories. In 1994 there were at least three of these operating in Taijiang, as well as in at least six other county towns throughout Qiandongnan. One of the Taijiang factories was set up by a Jiangsu company to produce tie-dyed silk cloth to be exported to Japan. It employed about 100 women, recruited from the countryside, who sat all day tying up thousands of tiny dot patterns on silk. They were paid RMB¥ 6 for every 10,000 ties, and although the manager said they could typically produce 5,000 ties per day, workers on the shop floor told me that the most anyone earned was between RMB¥ 30 and 40 per month.102  Another Taijiang factory employed a similar number of rural women earning similar wages making embroidered cloth for export to Southeast Asia. I visited similar factories throughout the prefecture, and in all cases women lived in factory-provided dormitories, but were responsible for their own food. Employment averaged about 100 per factory, and wages seldom exceeded RMB¥ 50 per month. Because of special policies developed to attract this kind of economic activity to Qiandongnan (such as those in Kaili’s special economic development zone discussed above), local governments were in fact collecting few tax revenues from these factories.

When asked in 1994, an officer at the Taijiang minwei justified these exploitative ventures by stressing that they only represented a first step in modernization. He likened them to a window through which more coastal companies could see the county’s investment potential. He said that Taijiang’s rural households still had few opportunities to earn a cash income, and that these factories would help generate a "commercial consciousness" in the countryside. He did not believe that future development might be truncated by using Guizhou’s countryside purely as a source of cheap labor and enhancing capital accumulation opportunities for coastal companies dabbling in international trade. But by 1996, the county’s attitude had changed considerably. The county had refused to renew any leases for the coastal-run factories, citing insufficient pay and poor working conditions. For Taijiang, the previous goal of attracting external investment at any cost had, as with the province in general, clearly backfired. "We lost money and the workers were treated badly," a minwei officer admitted. Furthermore, the county no longer had any funds available for promoting commercial crafts production. The county minwei’s annual appropriation of RMB¥ 10,000 had been cut, and what funds they did receive in the form of development grants were being swallowed up by day-to-day administrative expenditures and salaries.103

Thus, by 1996, the local state’s role in promoting rural "commercial consciousness" had diminished considerably. In Taijiang, all hopes for this were being pinned on private urban entrepreneurs. Yet the state still played a role in promoting an ideology of development in which Guizhou’s peasantry is portrayed as harboring a subsistence mentality from a pre-modern stage of production and culture. The state’s campaign to commercialize the countryside has involved the mythic construction of a purely subsistence economy in "backward mountain areas" such as Qiandongnan. Peasants are represented as locked within a xiaonong jingji ("small farm economy") mentality until "liberated" by the state and its urban entrepreneurial representatives as they benevolently spread the winds of reform to even the most tenacious strongholds of custom.104  To reveal the presence of a thriving "commercial consciousness" among the Miao, independent of state reforms, would be to open up a whole new line of argument concerning the economic backwardness of the mountain areas. More importantly, it would undermine the exoticism which—for urban entrepreneurs—is the commercial attraction of the Miao. That they come from a subsistence, tradition-bound society is what makes Miao embroidery so "authentic" to a new class of urban Chinese consumers. Miao society must be constructed in this way if it is to remain commercially attractive to outsiders. Such is the contemporary pattern of Guizhou’s internal colonialism. Ideology and expectations of ethnic remoteness have become part of a process seeking to preserve an idealized subsistence mode of production and, thus, preventing ethnic commodity production from initiating independent rural accumulation.

The desire for authenticity complements well the dominant patterns of capital accumulation in Guizhou’s growing crafts industry. As ethnic tourism in the region has grown, urban entrepreneurs have set up numerous state-sponsored crafts factories, most of which are located in Kaili, with others in Taijiang, Liping, and Huangping counties. With inadequate capital and a very limited market, many of these shut down after only a few months of operation, get combined with other operations, or are acquired by larger state units which can afford to subsidize them, such as timber companies or the army. Those which survive do so only by establishing market links with coastal China and/or Hong Kong and Taiwan. Unlike the examples discussed above, such as the silk tie-dye factory in Taijiang, these factories seek to manufacture marketable products featuring "authentic" ethnic crafts, such as wallets and clothing made with cloth embroidered or batiked in traditional patterns. While they tend to employ a number of rural women on-site, mainly to perform final assembly tasks, the majority of production occurs within village households on a contractual basis. The manager of Guizhou’s largest crafts enterprise, the Miao Embroidery Factory in Taijiang (which is partially funded by UNICEF), estimated that 65% of his factory’s income came from the sale of products which have been primarily produced in rural households. The manager of a smaller factory in Huangping gave an estimate of 70% for this figure. Rural women in Huangping contracting to apply the wax for batik tablecloths were earning about 10% of what these tablecloths were eventually sold for.105  At the Taijiang factory, I was told that contract producers could earn as much as 20% of the final sale producing embroidered patches for wallets. With higher value items, such as clothing, however, the proportion would be much less. Nevertheless, contracts could significantly enhance a rural household’s cash income.

But contract arrangements insured that control over production remained in the hands of urban factory managers who not only dictated piece-rates, but provided the "authentic" designs and patterns in order to insure standardization. Managers felt they were contributing to cultural development by teaching peasant households the value of money and enabling them to achieve a "commercial consciousness." But they also felt good about convincing peasants to respect the value of their traditions. "If it wasn’t for me," one told me, "peasants around here would forget their old patterns." This attitude illustrates the colonial nature of market socialism in rural Guizhou. Contract arrangements were lauded for helping to preserve a pre-modern (that is, pre-commercial) mode of production, and for maintaining authentic minzu traditions which were important not simply for their museum value, but more significantly for their exchange value.

The experience of the town of Shidong—in Taijiang county—illustrates the way metropolitan concerns for cultural preservation and authenticity result in increased subordination and vulnerability for Guizhou’s producers of minzu culture. In addition to being a well known Miao festival site, Shidong achieved notoriety during the 1980s as one of Guizhou’s most important ethnic crafts producing regions. Before 1990, Taijiang’s Miao Embroidery Factory dealt exclusively with Shidong for its contracted embroidery. As the factory’s manager, a Han, explained, "Shidong was traditionally much more developed than Taijiang, and this legacy is still evident today. The people there are very entrepreneurial, and so it was easiest for us to get started there." Shidong was perfect, he said, because it had developed early as an important river port; craftsmanship had become refined there. Then, after liberation, those traditional crafts were "frozen in time," because Shidong was forgotten. Roads and railroads replaced the river as the region’s most important transport network, and state investments went to developing nearby Taijiang as a government seat. By 1980, he said, Shidong had preserved a rich tradition in isolation while Taijiang had developed and become "Hanified." This gave Shidong new popularity in the wenhua re ("cultural fever") of the reform era, and crafts production developed rapidly due to official promotion of Shidong’s festivals and contracts with crafts factories.

During the 1990s, however, Shidong’s position as a crafts supplier for urban commercial enterprises declined significantly. "It is getting harder and harder to find authentic work there," one entrepreneur in Kaili complained. "They have become more and more influenced by Han culture, and so the patterns are not as authentic." Another problem, he said, was that textile production in Shidong was no longer the result of a self-sufficient, enclosed economy, but an increasingly commercial one, and this had also influenced local embroidery styles. His solution to this "contradiction" was to maintain a sort of cultural bank of authentic traditional styles, frozen in time, which would form the basis of sustained future production. "If peasants want a job," he said, "they’ll have to produce embroidery according to the styles we require, and these will be the authentic ones." Other managers had come to the same conclusion about Shidong and the need to actively counter the cultural losses incurred by commercial development. The result for Shidong producers was an increased vulnerability to losing lucrative contracts unless they surrendered to the judgment of their outside employers in determining what was authentic and what was not.

A new discourse of nationalism among minority elites?

The pronouncements of "aligning with the world" enthusiastically put forth in the 1990 Minzu Cultural Studies Association meetings in Kaili, discussed above, came on the heels of the 1980s wenhua re which swept across China in the early years of the economic reforms. Since then, as a new class of urban Han entrepreneurs has emerged to commodify the exoticism of rural minorities such as the Miao, contributing to a growing spatial gap between the metropolitan coast and the rural interior, there is evidence of a growing resistance to the commercial consequences of market socialism among minority elites. Schein has argued that the hyper-commercialized culture of the West which has been introduced by Han entrepreneurs throughout the cities and towns of Guizhou—karaoke bars, night clubs, racy films, and loose sexual behavior—have engendered a new discourse of traditional morality among minority elites in Guizhou. Faced with the commodification of so many aspects of their culture for the purposes of wenhua fazhan, Miao elites have taken to contrasting traditional Miao values with the wild (xiong) and rootless ways of Han depravity. Schein links this attitude to a concern over the integration of Miao youth into the economy of market socialism. "While Miao peasant regions," she writes, "have themselves been only minimally transformed by reform policies, what has happened is the partial proletarianization of Miao young people who find wage work in urban factories and large farms, especially along the coast where local labor is already relatively expensive."106

Minority elites have thus encountered an increasingly obvious contradiction in the "aligning with the world" encouraged by the commercialism of cultural development efforts. While metropolitan Han are eager to consume the traditions of isolated interior mountain regions such as Guizhou, it has become clear that in the pursuit of a "commercial conscience" the producers of ethnic minority culture—whether in contract production arrangements, urban crafts factories, or coastal theme parks and hotels—have lost what elites feel to be a sense of moral autonomy. If Schein’s observations are correct (and my field observations tend to concur), a new discourse of ethnic nationalism is perhaps emerging in Guizhou, a counter-discourse representing a new role for ethnic minority groups, as keepers of a non-commercialized lifestyle and traditional morality.
 
 

VI Conclusion

Given the environmental and economic problems which continue to trouble Guizhou, a semi-capitalized peasantry is perhaps a necessary step in achieving the long term sustainability of rural production. "Commercializing the countryside" is not, by itself, a sinister formula for the perpetuation of rural poverty. At any rate, Guizhou’s rural producers appear eager for any commercial opportunity that comes along. But when commercial development remains tied to a colonial ideology of ethnic cultural authenticity, market integration simply means continued subordination and vulnerability for the rural population in minority regions. Over a period of a decade, Guizhou’s ethnic groups have seen their status transformed from exemplars of impoverished rural backwardness to potential bastions of commercial modernity, the keepers of an exotic tradition metropolitan consumers are now eager to pay for. But an underlying ideology of cultural difference continues to inform these new attitudes and serves as a significant barrier separating rural ethnic regions from metropolitan Han China.

Guizhou’s peripheral situation is based on a combination of factors, including a topography unsuitable for agricultural accumulation, a rapidly increasing population in many regions where resources are already marginal, and a legacy of fiscal dependence on diminishing central subsidies and unprofitable resource-extraction and defense industries. Dominated by marginal agriculture, rich in energy resources and industrial raw materials, Guizhou has long functioned as net provider in China’s rapid industrial expansion, receiving little in return. While subsidies were relatively substantial, they generally went to urban consumers in the form of price subsidies and wages. Not only was rural Guizhou generally left to its own devices for inputs but, as with rural China in general, was severely squeezed to further fuel industrial growth. In the ideologically stifling atmosphere of Maoist China, there was little tolerance for ethnic differences. "Local nationalism" was raised as a counterrevolutionary straw-man and attacked with a fervor which left rural Guizhou reeling in chaos. The "backwardness" of ethnic groups became a convenient explanation for the countryside’s failure to develop under socialism.

While such ideological rectitude for the most part died with Mao, rural Guizhou’s difficulties have not abated during the reform era. The countryside has suffered the financial consequences of fiscal decline and decentralization, providing a significant impetus for commercial development. Ethnic "backwardness" is still trumpeted as the enemy of market socialism, but ethnic groups, ironically, now have the option casting off their poverty by selecting a few traditions to sell in China’s vigorous marketplace. Pushed by a political-economy of fiscal dependency and unequal exchange, Guizhou has vigorously pursued an expanded geography of trade and investment. Indeed, it can not afford to do otherwise. But such a move has failed to produce the results which provincial leaders clearly expected, while at the same time it has brought the province’s ethnic producers face to face with the ideological whims of urban consumerism. Sweeping across a landscape already prepared by decades of cultural development come the contemporary ideals of tradition, authenticity, and difference, their paths forged open by the accumulating logic of capital as it discovers fiscally strapped counties desperate to exploit their cheap labor for any kind of investment. Rural Guizhou may not be quite the "barren and profitless" place which met Hosie’s gaze a century ago, but a specter of colonialism still haunts the province as it seeks to overcome this historical legacy. Minority minzu groups face the most daunting situation in this regard, for they bear the dual and contradictory symbolism of impoverished backwardness and potentially marketable modernity.

Notes:
1 Fieldwork for this paper was carried out in Guizhou in 1993-94 thanks to generous grants provided by the National Science Foundation and the Committee on Scholarly Communication with China.  In addition, I would like to thank Kam-Wing Chan and the participants of the 1996 “China’s Provinces in Reform” Workshop for their assistance, suggestions, and critical comments.

2 Goodman, D. (1983) ‘Guizhou and the PRC: the development of an internal colony’, in D. Drakakis-Smith (ed.) Internal Colonialism: Essays Around a Theme, pp. 107-124, Institute of British Geographers, Developing Areas Research Group Monograph No. 3.

3 Hosie, A. (1890) Three Years in Western China, London: George Philip, p. 25.

4 Ibid., p. 32.  On the 19th century rebellions in Guizhou, see Jenks, R. (1994) Insurgency and Social Disorder in Guizhou:  The “Miao” Rebellion, 1854-1873, Honolulu:  University of Hawaii Press.

5 The nakedness of Miao farmers, especially girls, has long been a common Chinese image to mark both the poverty and tribal primevalness of the Miao.  In The Long March (1985), Harrison Salisbury recounts his informants’ impressions of Guizhou when the Red Army passed through in 1934; the Miao were so poor, they said, that girls had to “work naked in the fields” (p. 106).

6 Wiens, H. (1967) Han Chinese Expansion in South China, Hampden, CT: Shoe String Press, p. 190.

7 See Harrell, S. (ed.) (1995) Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, Seattle: University of Washington Press, for numerous essays on the history and contemporary legacy of China’s “civilizing project” along China’s periphery.

8 Hill, R.D. (1993) ‘People, land, and an equilibrium trap:  Guizhou province, China’, Pacific Viewpoint 34, 1:  3.

9 China Statistical Yearbook, 1995. Reprinted in Provincial China 1996, 1:  38, 52.

10 Guizhou Tongji Nianjian [Guizhou Statistical Yearbook], 1993, pp. 5, 7.

11 Edmonds, R.L. (1994) Patterns of China’s Lost Harmony, London: Routledge, p. 67.

12 Hill (1993) op. cit., p. 7.

13 Ibid., p. 15.

14 Guizhou Tongji Nianjian [Guizhou Statistical Yearbook], 1993, p. 191.

15 Guizhou Shengqing [Guizhou Provincial Gazetteer], p. 279.  Grain subsidis in 1985, for example, amounted to 17% of total grain consumed in the province.

16 "Minzu" may be translated as either "nationality" or "ethnic group," but has no exact equivalent in English.  Throughout this chapter I have chosen to follow a growing convention among those studying ethnicity in China and leave the term untranslated.

17 Hill (1993) op. cit., p. 6.

18 Ran (1991) op. cit., p. 221.

19 Ibid., p. 230.

20 It should be noted that much of this gap is explained in terms of a disparity between urban and rural Guizhou in general, but is magnified when isolating for regions in which minority populations predominate.

21 Net Material Product (Guomin Shouru) is the sum of net output value of agriculture, industry, construction, transport, and commerce, obtained by deducting the value of the material consumption of those sectors from the Gross Material Product (Shehui Zongchanzhi).  The disadvantage of using this indicator is that it excludes non-material production sectors such as services, education, public health, military, and government administration.

22 Li, R.S. (1991) ‘Guizhou shaoshu minzu zizhi difang jingji shehui fazhan qingkuan cunzai wenti ji jinhou fazhan de jianyi’ [Problems concerning socio-economic development in Guizhou’s minority minzu autonomous regions and suggestions for future development], in Guizhou Sheng Shaoshu Minzu Jingji Yanjiu [Research on Guizhou’s Minority Minzu Economy], Guiyang: Minzu, p. 3.

23 Ibid., p. 5.

24 The poverty line was initially based on an administrative village (xiang) average per capita income of less than RMB¥ 120.  In 1986, in order to cast a wider net of government assistance, the poverty line was revised to a county (xian) average of less than RMB¥ 150 (RMB¥ 200 in minority regions).  Authorities in Guizhou indicate that since 1993 the official poverty line in minority regions has increased to the equivalent of RMB¥ 300 per capita annual income.

25 Ran, M.W. et al. (eds.) (1991) ‘Guizhou sheng shaoshu minzu pinkun diqu jingji kaifa de xianzhuang,  zhiyue yinsu, yu duice’ [Economic development in Guizhou’s impoverished minority minzu regions: present situation, causal factors, and countermeasures], in Kaifa Da Xinan; Guizhou, Guangxi, Xizang Juan [Exploit the Great Southwest; Guizhou, Guangxi, Tibet Edition], Beijing: Xuefan, p. 220.

26 Ibid., p. 222, and Guizhou Shengqing [Guizhou Provincial Gazetteer], p. 115-119.  There is also less redistribution of grain from surplus regions to grain-poor regions within Guizhou.  This is because of reforms meant to encourage "agricultural growth poles" in regions suitable for agricultural accumulation.  These regions have less of their grain expropriated to poor regions, so that surplus can be invested in economic crops and rural industries.

27 Wen, H. (1991) ‘Guizhou shaoshu minzu diqu de qinggongye xianzhuang wenti ji jinhou de fazhan’ [Light industry in Guizhou’s minority minzu regions: current problems and future prospects], in Guizhou Sheng Shaoshu Minzu Jingji Yanjiu [Guizhou Minority Minzu Research], Guiyang: Minzu, p. 159.

28 Yan, T.H. (1991) ‘Wo sheng minzu zizhi difang “ba wu” shiqi jingji shehui fazhan chutan’ [Preliminary inquiry into socio-economic development in our province’s minzu autonomous regions during the 8th FYP], in Guizhou Sheng Shaoshu Minzu Jingji Yanjiu [Guizhou Minority Minzu Research], Guiyang: Minzu, pp. 10-22.

29 See, for example, Ran (1991) op cit.,  p. 221, and Li (1991) op cit., p. 2.

30 See Chan, K.W. (1994) Cities with Invisible Walls; reinterpreting urbanization in post-1949 China, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, pp. 59-63, for a summary of China’s Soviet-style development strategy during the Maoist era.

31 Kirkby, R. and Cannon, T. (1989) ‘Introduction’, in D.S.G. Goodman (ed.) China’ Regional Development, London: Routledge, p. 5.

32 Leung, H. and Chan, K.W. (1986) ‘Chinese regional development policies:  a comparative reassessment’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Asian Studies Association, Winnepeg, Canada.

33 Kirkby and Cannon (1989) op. cit., p. 5.

34 Ibid., p. 6.

35 See Kornai, J. (1986) Contradictions and Dilemmas; Studies on the Socialist Economy and Society, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

36 Tang, W.S. (1991) Regional uneven development in China, with special reference to the period between 1978 and 1988, Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Department of Geography Occasional Paper No. 110, p. 33.

37 Wong, C. (1991) ‘Central-local relations in an era of fiscal decline: the paradox of fiscal decentralization in post-Mao China’, China Quarterly 128:  712.

38 Kirkby and Cannon (1989) op. cit., p. 11.

39 Ibid., p. 6.

40 Naughton, B. (1988) ‘The Third Front: defense industrialization in the Chinese interior’, China Quarterly 115:  366.

41 Ibid., p. 367.

42 Ibid., p. 376.

43 Leung and Chan (1986) op. cit.

44 Goodman (1983) op. cit., p. 119.

45 Chen, Y.X. et al. (eds.) (1993) Guizhou Sheng Jingji Dili [Economic Geography of Guizhou Province], Beijing: Xinhua, pp. 60-63.  According to data in Lardy, N. (1978) Economic Growth and Distribution in China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 130-32, Guizhou’s revenue sharing relationship to the central government became one of net recipient beginning in 1958.  Up to this date it had been a net provider.

46 Goodman, D.S.G. (1986) Center and Province in the PRC: Sichuan and Guizhou, 1955-1965, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, p. 111.

47 Ibid., p. 131.

48 See Chen, Y.X. et al. (eds.) (1993) op. cit., pp. 64-67, for a summary of the impact of defense industrialization on Guizhou’s economy.

49 Liang. F. (1993) ‘Guizhou’s ordinance industry turns civil’, Beijing Review (October 11-17), p. 13.

50 Guizhou Shengqing [Guizhou Provincial Gazetteer], p. 142 and Zhongguo Tongji Nianjian [China Statistical Yearbook], 1995, p. 375.

51 Zhongguo Tongji Nianjian [China Statistical Yearbook], 1995, pp. 375, 378-79.

52 Calculated from local figures in Guizhou Nianjian [Guizhou Yearbook], 1996, pp. 640-710.

53 World Bank. (1992) China; Reform and the Role of the Plan in the 1990s, Washington, DC: The World Bank, pp. 55-56.

54 Guizhou Tongji Nianjian [Guizhou Statistical Yearbook], 1993, pp. 99-100.  In 1995 agriculture’s share of fixed capital investments in Guizhou had risen to 6% (Guizhou Nianjian [Guizhou Yearbook], 1996, p. 60).

55 Ibid.

56 Guizhou Nianjian [Guizhou Yearbook], 1996, p. 379.

57 Ibid., p. 59.

58 Guizhou Sheng Guotu Zongti Guihua [Guizhou Comprehensive Development Plan], Beijing: Zhongguo Jihua Weiyuanhui, 1992.

59 Deng (1993) op. cit.

60 Ye, S.Z. (1993) ‘Urban systems and the exploitation of natural resources in southwestern China’, in C.T. Kok et al. (eds.) Arbeiten zur Chinaforschung, Bremen: Zentraldruckerei der Universität Bremen, p. 129.

61 Guizhou Nianjian [Guizhou Yearbook], 1996, p. 61.

62 Liang (1993) op. cit., p. 14.

63 Wong, C., Heady C., and Woo, W.T. (1995) Fiscal Management and Economic Reform in the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.

64 In 1995, for example, provincial revenues only amounted to 45% of expenditures (Guizhou Nianjian [Guizhou Yearbook], 1996, p. 60.

65 Ibid., p. 96.

66 Ibid., p. 92.

67 Guizhou Nianjian [Guizhou Yearbook], 1996, p. 60; Guizhou Tongji Nianjian[Guizhou Statistical Yearbook], 1993, p. 102.

68 Wong, C. (ed.).  (1995) Financing Local Government in the People’s Republic of China [Draft version], Manila:  Asian Development Bank, p. 11.

69 Zhongguo Tongji Nianjian [China Statistical Yearbook], 1995, p. 21.

70 Ferdinand, P. (1989) ‘The economic and financial dimension’, in D.S.G. Goodman (ed.) China’s Regional Development, London: Routledge, p. 46.

71 Leung and Chan (1986) op. cit., p. 44.

72 Wong (1991) op. cit.

73 Xingdao Ribao [Xingdao Daily] 5/16/93.

74 See Hendrischke, H. (1997) ‘Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region:  towards Southwest China and Southeast Asia’, in D.S.G. Goodman (ed.) China’s Provinces in Reform: Class, Community, and Political Culture, London: Routledge, on the real estate speculation boom in Beihai.

75 Liang (1993) op. cit., p. 15.

76 Guizhou Huabao [Guizhou Pictorial] 1993, 5: 18-23.

77 Qiandongnan Bao [Qiandongnan Paper] 4/15/94 and Zhang, N.H. (1995) ‘Minzu zizhi difang gaige kaifang shiyanqu de zhengce yanjiu [Policy research on open reform experimental zones in minzu autonomous regions], Guizhou Minzu Yanjiu [Guizhou Minzu Research] 1:  31-33.

78 Interview with Sun Jinghua, Guizhou Tourism Bureau Director of Promotion and Marketing, 8/1/94.

79 Li (1991) op. cit.

80 Guizhou Ribao [Guizhou Daily] 4/14/93-4/18/93

81 Guizhou Ribao [Guizhou Daily] 8/8/93-8/12/93.

82 Guizhou Ribao [Guizhou Daily] 8/17/93.  See also the summary in Guizhou Huabao [Guizhou Pictorial] 1993, 6:  6-15.

83 Interview with Tourism Bureau official, Guiyang, 10/28/96.

84 Interview with Tourism Bureau official, Guiyang 10/28/96.

85 Guizhou Tongji Nianjian [Guizhou Statistical Yearbook], 1993, pp. 159, 161, 338-39.

86 China Statistical Yearbook, 1995.  Reprinted in Provincial China 1996(1), pp. 48-49.

87 See Chan (1994) op. cit., pp. 97-14, for a summary of the many ways urban residents have been subsidized by the Chinese state.

88 Guizhou Tongji Nianjian [Guizhou Statistical Yearbook], 1993, p. 168.

89 Guizhou Nianjian [Guizhou Yearbook], 1996, pp. 357 and 598.

90 Chen, Y.X. and Wang, J.R. (1990) ‘Guizhou jingji diyu fazhan zhanlue chutan [Preliminary inquiry into development strategies for Guizhou’s economic regions], Guizhou Shifan Daxue Xuebao [Journal of Guizhou Normal University] 63, 2: 1-6.

91 Hill (1993) op. cit.

92 Ran (1991) op. cit., 229.

93 Zhongguo Tongji Nianjian [China Statistical Yearbook], 1995, pp. 86, 332, and 381.

94 Guizhou Nianjian [Guizhou Yearbook], 1996, p. 231.

95 Lei, G. (1992) ‘Shuizu wenhua yu xiandaihua [Shui culture and modernization], Guizhou Minzu Yanjiu [Guizhou Minzu Research] 1:  33-36.

96 Guizhou Ribao [Guizhou Daily] 8/25/93

97 Lei (1992) op. cit., p. 33, my emphasis.

98 See Guizhou Sheng Minzu Wenhua Xuehui [Guizhou Minzu Cultural Studies Association] (1991) Zouxiang Shijie Dachao [Crossing the Great Bridge to the World], Guiyang: Minzu.

99 Although the noun minzu, that is, "ethnic nationality," includes the Han, it appears that when used as an adjective the term rarely, if ever, refers to the Han.  Just as "ethnic" is rarely thought of as applying to dominant racial groups (such as white Caucasians in the United States), "minzu" is often assumed to simply refer to minority groups.  That, at least, appeared to be the case at this conference.  "Minzu" is a less exclusive term than "minority minzu," but the issues being discussed dealt quite exclusively with those concerning minority groups.

100 By 1993 promoting Guizhou as an authentic breath of fresh air for modern tourists had become quite popular among tourism planners in general.  The following piece of promotional literature is illustrative:

 "Guizhou is both new and ancient.  Development has started late here.  Guizhou has been little affected by the pollution of modern industry, nor has it been assaulted (chongji) by modern civilization.  Nature is still pristine here, and people still preserve their traditional cultures.  There has been very little change here, little cultural corruption (wenhua xunran) from the outside.  The mountains are green, the water clear.  And because they're spread out all over, one can see minzu customs just about anywhere.
 "Guizhou's environment gives people a sense of returning to nature (huigui daziran).  This is something the people of the developed countries long for (mengmei yiqiu).  And Guizhou's minorities inspire people to value the preservation of living culture (huo wenhua).  In some parts of the world, all people have is staged culture (wutai wenhua).  But in Guizhou, tourists can enter the villages and houses of the minorities, share their lives, understand them" (Deng 1993, 8-9).

101 This pattern has been described in other developing world situations in terms of "articulation of modes of production."  Citing research by Wolpe, Hall provides the following statement which resonates strikingly with the situation in Guizhou:

In South Africa, the tendency of capital accumulation to dissolve other modes is cross-cut and blocked by the counter-acting tendencies to conserve the non-capitalist economies--on the basis that the latter are articulated in a subordinate position to the former.  Where capitalism develops by means, in part, of its articulation with non-capitalist modes, 'the mode of political domination and the content of legitimating ideologies assume racial, ethnic and cultural forms and for the same reasons as in the case of imperialism...political domination takes on a colonial form.'  [Wolpe] adds:  'The conservation of non-capitalist modes of production necessarily requires the development of ideologies and political policies which revolve around the segregation and preservation and control of African "tribal" societies'--that is, the relation assumes the forms of ideologies constructed around ethnic, racial, national, and cultural ideological elements (Hall 1979, 322).

102 For comparison, average monthly income in 1992 for wage earners in Taijiang was RMB¥ 165 (Guizhou Tongji Nianjian [Guizhou Statistical Yearbook, 1993, p. 95).

103 Interview with Taijiang Minorities Affairs Commission officer, 11/4/96.

104 This ideology is illustrated in a chapter, about one of Taijiang's most successful ethnic crafts producers, in a book titled Zhongguo Qiye Yinghao ("The Heroes of Chinese Enterprise").  The chapter chronicles the history of a Miao villager named Pan Yuzhen in a way which stresses how she was coaxed out of her "pre-modern" thinking to blossom as a successful entrepreneur and culturally developed citizen of "new China."  The chapter begins with the following paragraph:

“It used to be that the Miao women living amid the mountains believed in the tradition of making embroidered clothing only for their own use.  They would never think of giving it to outsiders, and certainly would never think of selling it.  This was the law of tradition.  Embroidery was never to be used for anything but making oneself beautiful, especially for marriage.  But in 1979, the reforms swept through China like a flood, and in the mountains the pool in which commerce was thought to be shameless started to ripple.  The winds of reform were felt by one woman there, who turned against traditional rules, broke the customs, and sold her first piece of embroidery.  Since then, she has travelled China from south to north, and has brought the Miao out of the mountains and into the world of commerce.  From the point of a needle, they have filled the earth with embroidery, and leapt to earning over 800,000 yuan.  This is not dream; this is a very true story” (Zhang, S.H. 1993).

105 Contract producers earned RMB¥ 3.5 per piece, with each piece selling for RMB¥ 35.  Working 12 hours non-stop, a woman could produce two pieces.

106 Schein, L. (1995) ‘The other goes to market:  the state, the nation, and unruliness in contemporary China’, Identities 2, 3:  18.
 

References:

Appendix A: Guizhou regional economic indicators, 1990 (RMB¥ per capita)
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