Cross‐border rubber cultivation between China and Laos: Regionalization by Akha and Tai rubber farmers

This paper is a multi‐sited ethnography of cross‐border rubber cultivation between C hina and L aos. Smallholder minority rubber farmers from X ishuangbanna ( C hina) have forged successful informal share‐cropping arrangements to grow rubber trees on the land of relatives and friends in neighbouring L aos. By becoming rich and entrepreneurial rural citizens, A kha and T ai farmers have also, in their own eyes, raised their own ‘quality’ ( suzhi ) and see themselves as ‘modern’. By examining various meanings of ‘modern’ in C hina, and contrasting the rubber farmers' experience with J acob E yferth's notion of rural ‘deskilling’, this paper shows how through learning to plant, cultivate and tap rubber, these farmers have taken on the discipline and technical knowledge of ‘modern’ workers and become ‘skilled’. By rising in ‘quality’, minority farmers on C hina's periphery challenge the entrenched binaries of urban/rural, modern/backward, prosperous/poor and Han/minority nationality. X ishuangbanna minority farmers acknowledge that they are also ‘backward’ in the C hinese social hierarchy, but their extension of rubber cultivation to kin and others in L aos has confirmed their modernity as dispensers of development, technical know‐how and ‘superior’ C hinese culture to Lao farmers who are ‘backward and poor’. In contrast to large state rubber farms that have failed to establish rubber plantations in northern L aos, minority farmers have created regionalization.