Afforestation, Propaganda, and Agency: The case of Hangzhou in Mao's China

This article examines the afforestation movement in the West Lake area in Mao's China (1949–1976). I argue that this campaign was, by its nature, propagandistic, for it created a narrative of a deforested China before 1949 and a greener land after 1949 to serve the purpose of justifying China's new political system and popularizing socialist ideologies. Hence, such projects helped to define what socialism was in China and thereby solicited the participation of the general population. This afforestation project, engineered to legitimize the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) rule in China both domestically and internationally, was, however, marred by both human and non-human actors. Local inhabitants who were intent upon protecting their own private properties vis-à-vis the collectivizing state, poachers who illegally felled trees for firewood and timber, and tea growers who were keen on expanding their tea plantations at the cost of mountain forests sabotaged the CCP's afforestation efforts. Meanwhile, various pests contributed to the massive death of newly planted trees and prompted local cadres and citizens to adjust afforestation policies throughout Mao's times. I argue that human and non-human actors possessed non-purposive agency—that is, agency not driven by their intentions and purposes but defined by their actions—to affect, deflect, and undercut the CCP's political agendas.