Ecological History in Preindustrial and Postagrarian China

This commentary compares Stevan Harrell’s “resilience” model to other familiar paradigms of China’s premodern history, including those of Mark Elvin and G. William Skinner. It gives examples of the Yellow River and frontier clearance as supporting evidence for the utility of the model. It further suggests that the People’s Republic of China under Xi Jinping is entering, according to Harrell’s framework, a new “conservation” (K) phase of rigidity, blindness, and conservatism that bodes ill for China’s environmental future.