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Cultivating the Nation in Fujian's Forests: Forest Policies and Afforestation Efforts in China, 1911–1937
E. Elena Songster
| CHINA EXPERIENCED tremendous upheaval during the early twentieth century as its new leaders attempted to establish the Republic of China following the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1912.1 With many factions and continuous fracturing, the young country struggled to gain a sense of national union. China's leaders sought in various ways to strengthen the national spirit as well as the material well being of their country. Trees provided one answer to both of these needs. The new government in China was quick to recognize that all of the infrastructure and tools necessary to build a strong modern society during the republican period (1911–1937) required a constant supply of wood: for railroad cars and railroad ties, poles for electric and telephone lines, improved dams and mills, steamboats and naval ships, bridges connecting new roads, and paper for updated school books, new maps, and mass media.2 Trees provided the basic components for attaining most of the material elements of early-twentieth-century visions of a new China and the material means for operating and protecting a new state. To realize any of these visions, the new government required a predictable and consistent supply of timber. To gain access to the timber supply growing within China, the nation's leaders established a national forest policy coupled with afforestation plans. In 1914, two years after the founding of the Republic of China, President Yuan Shikai established the National Forest Law. He endorsed China's first Arbor Day one year later.3 Following Yuan Shikai's death in 1916, warlord rule divided China for over a decade until Chiang Kai-shek created a new centralized government under the Nationalist Party in 1928. Chiang Kai-shek's new government revived Yuan Shikai's forestation efforts with even greater vigor. |
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The act of cultivating national sentiment with saplings was not unique to China. Many other young states also have recognized the symbolic power of tree planting as well as the material benefits of control over the timber supply. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the Jewish National Fund made the association between the nation and afforestation famous with its concerted efforts to integrate tree planting and nation building in the area of present-day Israel.4 In Soviet Russia, Vladimir Lenin's government did not even wait a full year after the Bolshevik Revolution to establish new land and forest policies defining broad state ownership of forestland.5 |
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Although several scholars have done excellent work on the forest history of China, the vast majority of this scholarship focuses on imperial China (before 1911) or communist China (after 1949).6 This paper examines the forces that transformed forests and forestry between these two eras. The early twentieth century was a unique period of rapid developments in forest science worldwide. Forest science was one of several "western" disciplines to have a strong impact on Chinese policy, education, and practice. This study will focus on the connections between China's nationalizing efforts and new forest policy during two incipient moments of nation building in the republican period: the early years following the overthrow of the dynastic system in 1912, and the founding of the Nationalist regime in Nanjing in 1928. The afforestation campaigns under both Yuan Shikai and Chiang Kai-shek illustrate strong state concern about timber supply as well as an understanding of the symbolic potency attached to planting trees. |
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