‘When the Land Cannot Support the People Any More’

Abstract

This article examines the use of a popular Chinese formulation, yifang shuitu yanghuo buliao yifangren (‘the soil and water of a place cannot support the local people’), in China’s poverty-alleviation resettlement by focusing on the case of the Tibet Autonomous Region. The official narrative that the formulation points to is that the native land of Tibetans living in ‘harsh’ environments can no longer support them and cannot enable them to escape from ‘poverty’; they thus need to be resettled. The article shows that, while the degree to which the formulation holds true is debatable even from a government perspective, local officials find the authority embedded in the formulation, originating as it has from the central government, useful as a means of persuasion in getting Tibetans to agree to resettle and thus facilitating policy implementation on the ground. This finding echoes earlier research on the usefulness of political language for authorities in China at different levels of the administration.