Final Map Project

Welcome aboard! This tour is based on my Ph.D. dissertation on forest management and wildlife conservation in Northeast China from the 1950s to present (in order to prevent plagiarism). This tour will look at six crucial sites that shaped the history of the forest and its inhabitants of Northeast China.

Hailin County in Heilongjiang

- Forest Fire Prevention and 1951 Conflagrations

Prevention of forest fires was one of the most significant forest protection policies of the early 1950s. However, when the state officials prohibited slash-and-burn-cultivation as a way to prevent forest fires, the ban met challenges from the local cadres who were more concerned with the lack of cultivated land a more pressing problem. In 1951, for instance, after the promulgation of a slash-and-burn cultivation ban during the forest fire campaign seasons, cadres of Hailin County in Songjiang Province even secretly changed the regulation to permit slash-and-burn cultivation. Because of the change in regulation, almost 52,000 hectares of forest were lost in fires caused by fire-fallow farming in the county in May 1951 alone. The conflagrations that swept Northeast China from 1950 to 1951 eventually made the state to find more strict measures such as punishment to control the local cadres. The conflict between the central and local bureaucrats represented in the case of Hailin county became a continuous issue throughout the 1960s when the state promoted a series of conservation policies that were in direct conflict with the local livelihood.

“Virgin forests or Xing’an” (Wu Zuoren, 1964)

Jiayin Dinosaur National Geology Park in Yichun

The Greater and Lesser Xing’an Mountain – The Ideas of Virgin Forests

In the mid-1950s, Heilongjiang forests such as the Greater and Lesser Xing’an mountains appeared in the national scientific discourse as precious "virgin forests," the untainted natural heritage of the nation. The forests in Heilongjiang, however, had never been virgin, since they had been the source of livelihood for local residents prior to 1949. Moreover, after the establishment of the PRC, the Heilongjiang government participated in the constant afforestation, reforestation, and utilization of the forest. Yet, scientists invoked the romanticized image of the Northeast forests as "virgin forests" as a metaphor to support their request for state-initiated natural conservation. For instance, biologist Qi Maoman believed that just as China’s historical legacy deserved national protection, so did its natural heritage. My research will investigate how these discrepant perceptions of the Northeast forest, one symbolic and the other pragmatic, became a continuous issue as wildlife began to be included in forest management and protection policy in the early 1960s.

Yichun, Heilongjiang - Center of Northeast Forestry Management

Yichun was one of the regions where the efforts of the Heilongjiang Provincial Department of Forestry were mostly concentrated; it generated the most extensive and continuous research on local forestry, was one of the major regional wildlife experimental sites, and was one of the centers of the regional hunters’ unions. Most influential political figures of the People’s Republic such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping also paid continuous attention to forestry in Yichun, including the on-site inspection of Yichun’s forestry districts, forestry institutions, and China’s largest Korean pine forests in 1961 and 1963. As a result of these inspections, the Heilongjiang Provincial Government began construction of the Korean Pine reserve in cooperation with the Jilin Provincial Government.

Zhongnanhai - Headquarters of Chinese Government

Oroqen Ethnic Minority

Beijing - State Council of the People's Republic of China and the Hunting Regulation of 1962

In the early years of the PRC, the state government only concentrated on using wildlife as precious diplomatic gifts. However, as the thriving scientific discussions of natural protection in the mid-1950s began to influence the state discourse on wildlife, by the late 1950s, concerns about extinction were expressed in state documents. More importantly, in 1962, the State Council in Beijing promoted “The State Council’s Order of the Reasonable Usage of Wildlife Resources (1962),” marking conservation as an indispensable underlying principle in determining the state utilization of animal resources. It implemented a system of hunting licenses and hunting regulations. The new system was based on the Soviet conservation model, as the scientific exchange between Chinese and Soviet scientists continued even after the Sino-Soviet Split (1960). The new regulation also included the protection of wildlife habitat and offspring, became a crucial cornerstone of the construction of natural reserves, the building of wildlife sanctuaries, and the creation of hunting teams to regulate hunting in Northeast China.

Heihe

- Oroqen Minority Participation in

State-initiated Conservation

Heihe (in Heilongjiang province), which borders Russia, is one of the places that Oroqen minority communities in Northeast China. Oroqens were minority hunters who inhabit the wildlife-rich forests of the Greater and Lesser Xing’an Mountains. From the Qing dynasty to the PRC, they were often referred to as "the people dwelling in the mountains," or "magic hunters of the forest." Considering Oroqen as reclusive, primitive, and superstitious people living in the forest, the Heilongjiang government tried to modernize them throughout the 1950s. However, local government mobilization of local hunters in 1963 in the Provincial Hunter’s Union as a response to the central government’s request to protect national wildlife triggered an unexpected change in the state-Oroqen relationship. Unlike their American counterparts who formed natural reserves in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, the Heilongjiang bureaucrats did not see Oroqen as the enemy or a hindrance to conservation projects. They saw Oroqen more as ideal partners who could learn to “properly use wildlife resources,” by which the Heilongjiang bureaucrats’ meant to increase the manufacture of animal products. At least from the bureaucrats’ point of view, the cooperation with the ethnic minority was a win-win success. The bureaucrats praised the ways in which the union provided Oroqen with better economic conditions, vastly increased the number of wildlife to be hunted, and finally turned the Oroqen into good Marxists who served the nation with their exceptional hunting skills. However, the successful alliance between the provincial government and the Oroquen facilitated the exploitation of wildlife resources. This suggests that the incorporation of indigenous knowledge and local cooperation, which has been the basis of the contemporary community-based conservation projects, could also lead to a vast environmental degradation depending on the subject of and the motivation behind involving the indigenous populace.

Harbin - Siberian Tiger Park

Amur tiger (Siberian tiger or Northeast tigers - 东北虎 - in Chinese) was one of the key endangered species in Northeast China. Siberian Tiger Park, currently in Harbin, Heilongjiang, was constructed in 1986 to protect endangered Amur tiger species in Northeast China. The Siberian tiger Park is an excellent place to observe China’s wildlife conservation from the reform-era and on. The construction of the tiger park was during the same period when the CCP began promulgation of a series of environmental protection laws after the death of Mao (1976) such as the Environmental Protection Law (1979), Marine Environment Protection Law (1984), and Wildlife Protection Law (1988). Promulgation of such laws, combined with the rise of civil society, has been considered as the starting point of PRC environmental protection history. However, the concern of Amur tiger extinction, construction of natural reserves, and state attempts to breed wildlife in captivity have a long history dating back to the 1950s and the 1960s. Siberian Tiger Park in Harbin indeed is the heritage of those early attempts to protect Amur tiger in Northeast China. It is now the second-largest tiger reserve in China, hosting almost 800 tigers.