Left to Live and Die: Resource Security and the Biopolitics of Land Stockpiling in China

Abstract

Beginning in 2007, the Chinese state used liberalising policy and funding to encourage the expansion of large-scale grain farming. Despite this support, many of the new farms have struggled financially and folded. Drawing on Foucauldian biopolitics and resource security literature, I argue that, with modernised agriculture, the state primarily sought to create not commercial farms, but the redundant farming infrastructure needed to buffer its growing reliance on food imports, abide by global trade regulations, and sustain its urban export manufacturing economy. These balancing efforts harmed commercial farmers: land commodification and policy funding incentivised urban government officials to intervene in rural land-use planning, but low global market aligned grain prices disincentivised them from considering the place-particular viability of their plans for producers. This article contributes to critical agrarian change literature by highlighting how modernist states become beholden to rational scientific techniques and sacrifice rural areas for increasingly vulnerable urban areas.