The Anthropocene and a Small Place in China

Abstract

This article explores the concept of the Anthropocene through the case of Baiyin, a significant mining city in the western Chinese province of Gansu. Baiyin’s history, from its industrial birth in the 1950s to its current environmental remediation and economic diversification efforts, highlights how urban communities built around industrial resource extraction have blurred both physically and conceptually the dichotomy between urban and hinterland. Baiyin’s role in the larger, global dissolution of the urban/hinterland divide draws attention, moreover, to the nonlinearity and complexity of Anthropocene processes at the level of the city. The article contributes to our understanding of the multifaceted nature and local manifestations of the Anthropocene and offers a case study through which to view the planetary integration of urban and hinterland environments.