Suchergebnisse

Land clearance and agriculture have long been associated with fire. Open fire, whether from natural or human ignition, has changed the face of many natural landscapes, especially in frontier regions. Much of modern China's landscape has been shaped by fire, yet fire has been treated as a "disaster" (huozai) in official literature. However, fire in Chinese agriculture also played a positive role in the development of regional economies. This essay will review different meanings of "fire disasters" in recent Chinese environmental history by analyzing a few illustrative examples of late Imperial to Mao-era agricultural development, warfare, and legal institutions. By examining these elements of fire-culture landscapes, this paper will consider problems and management practices of Chinese environmental history, especially distinct ethnic, regional, and temporal trends in legal and administrative forms of fire control. These examples enable us to examine aspects of China military, agricultural, and social and ethnic history that lend themselves to cross cultural and environment comparison.

Over the past 150 years few Western and Chinese scholars have examined the nature of the environment in Hutiao xia (Tiger Leaping Gorge) and its various inhabitants. However, as a unique geographical and geological feature, one of Asia's deepest gorges, part of the headwaters of the Yangtze River, and a common destination for tourists, the gorge has taken on greater and greater significance. Americans, Chinese literati, Party Cadres, and others have commented on Tiger Leaping Gorge. This essay will examine both the local environment and local environmental practices related to the gorge. Considering historical and contemporary land use practices, the gorge and its changing status can act as a microcosm of western China's various kinds of land development strategies, their implications for local and larger concerns, and land use ideologies of various sorts. Through discussing soil composition, water management, natural vegetation patterns, population growth, and recent developments in tourism, this essay will discuss the human impact on the natural environment of Tiger Leaping Gorge between the 1870s and 2002. It will not only demonstrate patterns in environmental degradation based on both natural and human processes, it will also show that depending on the form of institutional authority and local management practices, the environment in the gorge has been most effected by the political and ideological changes of the last half-century in comparison to earlier times. However, despite increasing challenges in the face of various human factors, some recent environmental practices have succeeded in helping to minimize elements of local soil and vegetation degradation. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

Hayes reviews BORDER LANDSCAPES: The Politics of Akha Land Use in China and Thailand by Janet C. Sturgeon.

Hayes reviews CHINA'S ENVIRONMENT AND THE CHALLENGE OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT edited by Kristen A. Day.