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Abstract

Zhoujiazhuang is singular, being the only de facto people's commune in China today. At present, Zhoujiazhuang still maintains the political, economic, and social structure that has been essentially in place since 1956. For over sixty years—since ten years before the Cultural Revolution and thirty-eight years after the dismantling of almost all people's communes in 1982—Zhoujiazhuang has survived as an organizational unit over the same territory comprising the same six natural villages.

The modernization paradigm pursued by China has tended to privilege industry over agriculture, urban over rural, and the middle class over the subaltern, with the country's growth statistics and policy emphases accordingly geared to such a paradigm. This has resulted in almost mindless degradation of nature. The key question China faces is thus not one of more progress or more growth, but of the multiple tasks of reversing the dire damage already done to its ecology, society, and culture.

The widespread nature of dissent within China is only now coming to light as the government attempts to stamp out the centres of underground resistance

Over the last twenty years, China has gained recognition for its efforts to reduce pollution and remediate the effects of industrialization within its borders. To mitigate the adverse effects of this reality, communities are returning to grassroots projects that present an alternative to unchecked globalization.

Based on a variety of interviews with residents, farmers, scientists, journalists and activists who have been affected by the Fukushima catastrophe, the authors underscore the personal, political and humanitarian impacts in testimonies, science and photos. The book engagingly addresses diverse issues that continue to haunt and persist, and calls for collective responsibility to deal with the devastating environmental, economic and social consequences of nuclear energy. The book offers a critique of the violent history of modernism and supremacy of science that have been articulated into all forms of social injustice and ecological injustice. Lau Kin Chi is Coordinator, Programme on Cultures of Sustainability at the Centre for Cultural Research and Development, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China. Huang Xiaomei is a freelance translator based in Hong Kong, China. He Zhixiong is Director of the Digital Section, Green Ground Rural Reconstruction Social Enterprise Alliance, China

In China, the orientation toward "ecological civilization" has been proposed for some years. But if the hard core of developmentalism and modernization continues to be the guiding principle, China will continue to be challenged by social injustice and environmental devastation.

Zhoujiazhuang and the Puhan Rural Community offer contrasting experiences of how communities in different parts of China have responded to, negotiated, and undergone extensive changes during the last forty years since the reform policy was implemented in the country in 1979.

In light of ecological disasters in China and social alienation among the Chinese people, this article argues that ecology must take precedence over economy, agriculture over industry and finance, and life over money and profit. The article focuses on the New Rural Reconstruction Movement and the Loving Home Village campaigns and identifies several grassroots initiatives in search for pathways to social and ecological transition. It presents in detail the trajectories of Little Donkey Farm, Liang Shuming Rural Reconstruction Center, Yun Jianli, and Yang Zhengxi, which are examples of how to mobilize both urban and rural communities to participate in social and ecolo- gical transformation.

This article examines how China deals with the global crises. China's policies to counter the crises rely on maintaining investment-led growth, which, however, has incurred an overexpansion of credits and serious debts similar to those of the West entering the era of financial capitalism. The current challenge is whether China can deploy the strategy of rural vitalization to turn to ecological civilization.