Unlike the old, narrow, dusty roads, the newly built, wider concrete roads in Gyatsa village on the north-east Tibetan Plateau are lined with lights and resemble streets in urban centres.Footnote 1 The streetlights shine brightly, automatically turning on at 7.30 p.m. and off at 5 a.m. The new roads serve as the village’s main thoroughfares and connect each household. The traditional earthen walls running along the village’s main street and household courtyards have been uniformly painted: the courtyard walls are white and decorated with traditional Tibetan symbols and trims, while the shorter walls along the street are coated in grey paint. The village household gates, which were once constructed in a haphazard way, have been uniformly rebuilt in wood and adorned with elaborate carved decorations. In addition, there is a new “cultural centre” in the village centre, which features brightly coloured exercise equipment and a basketball court. A recently built single-storey building in the same location houses four rooms – a clinic, an office for the village Party members, a village meeting hall and a bedroom. These activities, facilities and public services all stem from the “beautiful countryside” (meili xiangcun 美丽乡村) initiative, a development strategy launched in Qinghai province in 2014.
Since China’s central state announced the “Constructing a new socialist countryside” (shehuizhuyi xin nongcun jianshe 社会主义新农村建设) campaign in 2005, China’s rural areas have undergone extensive “development” projects and initiatives. One such project, the “beautiful countryside” (BC) initiative, was launched in Qinghai in 2014 as part of the rural revitalization strategy and efforts to achieve a “moderately prosperous society.” Unlike previous development projects associated with the “Constructing a new socialist countryside” campaign, which focused on improving the living standards of rural populations through the provision of “modern housing”Footnote 2 and resettlement programmes,Footnote 3 this new initiative emphasizes elements of “greening” (lüsehua 绿色化 or lühua 绿化), “green development” (lüse fazhan 绿色发展) and beautification through a programme of rural reconstruction. The objective is to make villages beautiful and pleasant living environments for rural residents, ultimately contributing to the larger project of creating a “beautiful China.”Footnote 4
However, villagers do not primarily understand the BC initiative as a “greening” or environmental initiative; instead, they see it as urban expansion that results in their village acquiring certain characteristics of a city. Gyatsa residents appreciate the state’s efforts to improve their village’s built environment, as do other Tibetan rural community residents in Qinghai.Footnote 5 As a result of the implementation of this initiative, most elderly residents now refer to their village using Chinese terms such as “small city” (xiao chengshi 小城市), “city-like village” (xiang chengshi yiyang de cun 像城市一样的村) and “half-city and half rural” (bannong bancheng 半农半城), rather than calling it a village (sde ba སྡེ་བ། nongcun 农村). Villagers use these Chinese terms as loanwords rather than use the Tibetan equivalents to describe the newly reconstructed village environment. This implies that the concepts associated with the BC initiative and rural urbanization have been introduced to rural Tibetan communities by officials who communicate in Chinese, the state’s lingua franca. Consequently, the use of Chinese terms related to rural urbanization is both necessary and a symbolic reflection of this new type of urbanization project. It also reflects past encounters where officials imposed the state discourse in Chinese, in contrast to the local Tibetan narratives.Footnote 6
The Gyatsa residents who understand the village as having become a small city or a city-like village are primarily the elders or members of the older cohort: men and women in their 40s and older. The younger cohort (aged 15–30) take a different view. Like most young Tibetans in other Tibetan communities, Gyatsa Tibetan youth’s understanding of the city is based on the material landscape, including the presence of tall buildings, concrete roads with streetlights, department stores, parks, movie theatres and, importantly, spaces that offer opportunities for individualism and freedom. A free space where they can experience an urban and modern lifestyle and find employment opportunities is also a key factor in how young Tibetans in Gyatsa differentiate between city and village. This paper focuses on the older cohort.
By highlighting the significance of the greening and aesthetic elements of the BC initiative, as well as local government officials’ interpretation and understanding of programme implementation, I argue that although “green” development is underlined in all official documents, on-the-ground implementation of the programme is, as with previous projects associated with rural reconstruction, focused more on material improvements than on actual environmental well-being. While official documents about the programme stress village beautification through greening, the only green elements of the programme I witnessed during fieldwork were a few large new rubbish bins in the villages. I saw no evidence of elements generally associated with “green” development projects, such as plant cover, garden construction or the use of renewable energy; rather, I observed the provision of basic facilities and public services. Consequently, I explore what “green” means for local officials and planners, including village leaders, and what elements of these programmes are actually “green.”
Moreover, I argue that the BC initiative is a form of aesthetic governmentality. It constructs tidy and beautiful spaces and shapes subjectivities towards building a city-like modern space, promoting rural urbanization. In developing this argument, I explore the shift in the state’s emphasis, from urbanization towards focusing on environmental well-being and aesthetic living environments for rural residents.
My analysis is based on ethnographic research, including participant observation and 41 semi-structured interviews with individuals in Gyatsa village, Trika county (Guide xian 贵德县), Qinghai province, as well as ten government officials at the township and county levels in Trika county, all of whom were actively involved in the programme implementation between 2018 and 2024. During this period, I interacted with villagers, focusing on their understanding and perceptions of the project as well as their future plans. I also reviewed key national policy documents, secondary reports and blogs about the programme in both Chinese and English. My interviews centred on the state’s implementation of the BC initiative, emphasizing “beautification” and green development. Interviews with Gyatsa Tibetan residents were conducted in Tibetan (Amdo dialect); I used Mandarin and Qinghai Chinese dialects when speaking with local officials and planners.
In the following section, I first examine how the BC initiative can be viewed through the lens of aesthetic governmentality and analyse how the village can be “beautified” to resemble a city. Next, by placing my analysis within the existing scholarship on rural reconstruction and rural urbanization, I delineate China’s recent development strategy shift, which emphasizes greening elements rather than solely focusing on urbanization. To demonstrate how the BC initiative shapes subjectivities and constructs a modern space and city-like village, I explore how villagers, local officials and planners understand and interpret the programme and its implementation.
Constructing a Beautiful Countryside and Aesthetic Governmentality
Aesthetic principles were incorporated into the BC initiative in Gyatsa’s planning and activities in Gyatsa, as evident in the wooden household gates and newly built courtyard walls. By integrating such aesthetic elements into material improvements for each household and the village as a whole, the BC efforts are striking and stand out – they are intended to portray “an image of the rebuilt village as wealthy and urbanized, although villagers themselves were often neither.”Footnote 7 Rather than resisting the project, village residents actively participated in its implementation. This behaviour, particularly regarding the aesthetically designed material improvements, can be understood through the concept of aesthetic governmentality, which was initially developed by Asher Ghertner and later expanded by several anthropologists and geographers.Footnote 8
For Michel Foucault, governmentality refers to the mentalities, rationalities, technologies and practices of government, where “government” is understood as “the conduct of conduct,” including “governing the self” as well as “governing others” to guide behaviour.Footnote 9 Ghertner extends Foucault’s concept of governmentality, showing how aesthetic norms in informal settlements in Delhi were more effective and implementable than the statistical and calculative deployment of “government truths.”Footnote 10 He argues that the Indian state’s effort to transform Delhi into a “world-class city” is a project of rule by aesthetics, “a mode of governing space on the basis of codes of appearance rather than through the calculative instruments of map, census and survey.”Footnote 11 Drawing on Jacques Ranciere’s theorization of aesthetics and politics as the distribution of the sensible, Gherter argues that those codes of appearance may seem to be nothing more than individual taste but are, in fact, expressions of a hegemonic order. Aesthetic governmentality relies heavily on new visual techniques, such as photographic images, rather than on traditional administrative tools, such as surveys and statistical data, to regulate urban spaces. This allowed authorities in Delhi to meet their objectives by justifying slum clearances based on the outward appearance of slums and not on their functioning calculative devices.Footnote 12
Using aesthetic governmentality as an analytical framework, Denise Lawrence-Zúñiga explores how preservationist homeowners in Alhambra, California, succeeded in securing a traditional design over housing remodelling.Footnote 13 This preference contrasted with those of the affluent Chinese immigrants living in the area, who preferred to renovate with modernized and distinct aesthetic structures that appealed to their cultural tastes and transnational homebuyers’ preferences. The preservationist approach was enforced through municipal design reviews, not only by influencing homeowners’ design choices through the promotion of a specific vision of suburban heritage that aligns with historic and traditional preservation standards, but also by changing the perceptions of those immigrants’ aesthetic preferences, which local preservationists understood as not conforming to what they called the “community’s aesthetic standard.”
Similar conflicts between Asian immigrants and local preservationists over housing design have also arisen in the San Gabriel Valley in California.Footnote 14 Urban planners use residential design guidelines that include aesthetic expressions such as drawings and photographs to shape home construction practices. This implementation of design guidelines serves as an instrument of aesthetic governmentality. Although wealthy Asian immigrant communities initially resisted the design requirements proposed by planners and design review boards, they eventually complied by hiring design professionals whose views aligned with those of long-term preservationist residents.
Turning specifically to China, geographer Choo-Piew Pow argues that the country’s efforts to address environmental problems in urban centres have not only focused on “techno-scientific practices and calculative governmental logic that render urban environmental problems visible, intelligible, and governable but also increasingly rely on an eco-aesthetic normativity that perpetuates the aestheticization of urban environmental politics.”Footnote 15 For Pow, China’s evolving eco-aesthetic system is evident in the management of urban development, which selectively incorporates aesthetic elements into city planning and governmental practices. This includes creating city landscapes dotted with beautifully designed green sculptures, city parks, and roadside barren trees sporting artificial green leaves – even in winter. In addition, residents are also provided with lessons on how to live healthily and maintain neighbourhood tidiness, along with reminders to sort their rubbish. These activities stimulate urban citizens’ aesthetic sensibilities, cultivating their ecological awareness to produce a new form of urban space and subjects, specifically a “new form of bourgeois environmentalism” for the urban middle class.Footnote 16
Similarly, Tim Oakes examines how local officials in Guizhou recreated Miao ethnic 苗族 heritage to improve behaviour and enhance the residents’ suzhi 素质 in the service of economic growth through tourism.Footnote 17 After observing the ways in which the local state refurbished all the buildings in town with artwork and decorative symbols of Miao ethnic culture and lifestyle, Oakes argues that aesthetic forms of Miao ethnic heritage serve as a governmental technique to rebuild the town “as a more governable and harmonious space” and to produce more governable modern citizens.Footnote 18
This article aims to expand the theorization of aesthetic governmentality by examining the construction of the “beautiful countryside” in a rural village. As Ghertner shows, in the case of Delhi slums, aesthetic norms were typically neither rejected by slum dwellers nor simply internalized through passive acceptance. Instead, slum dwellers appropriated these norms by aspiring to own improved, world-class housing and ultimately becoming world-class citizens, aligning with India’s state ambition to attain world-class status.Footnote 19 In contrast, at my research site, local residents eagerly embraced such aesthetic norms. First, unlike the slum dwellers in Delhi, who faced displacement, Gyatsa residents were allowed to remain in their village. Second, villagers internalized these aesthetic norms, partly because of the visible, aesthetically designed material improvements to individual houses – improvements that were also observable in other villages where similar projects had been implemented. For most villagers, transforming rural villages into consumption sites involved transferring the elements they desired from the farming-centred production model to diversification activities, such as transforming the village into a rural tourism destination. Thus, in Gyatsa, incorporating aesthetic principles into BC planning can be understood as a strategy to encourage residents to view the newly built village space as desirable. As Xi Lan and colleagues maintain, aesthetic attributes and visual order serve as subtle means for power to garner acceptance and recognition, thus securing legitimacy.Footnote 20 That is, constructing a “beautiful countryside” creates an aesthetic normativity, thereby legitimizing governmental intervention.Footnote 21
Similar to the ways in which local residents engaged with the state-led beautification efforts in Henan province, Gyatsa residents actively participated in similar beautification work, with the expectation that they would benefit from it.Footnote 22 This process involved not only improving the built environment of the village but also enhancing the appearance of family gates and courtyards, which villagers found aesthetically pleasing. These efforts made it seem reasonable to local residents for the government to reconstruct the space, ultimately advancing rural urbanization. In this context, the BC initiative shapes subjectivities, guiding residents towards the construction of a modern village and the cultivation of modern citizens. Through aesthetics, the programme’s implementation changes locals’ ways of thinking and attitudes, producing more governable modern subjects while offering villagers a sense of aspiration – a city-like image and expectations of a better future in a modernized village that is markedly different from traditional farming life.
Building the New Socialist Countryside: Rural Reconstruction
Since 2005, rural residents across China have been involved in the “Constructing a new socialist countryside” campaign, a broad policy aimed at addressing the income gap between China’s urban and rural residents.Footnote 23 Robin Bray argues that the primary goal of the campaign is to “modernize and urbanize the rural built environment” by extending state-led urban planning policies.Footnote 24 This resonates with Françoise Robin and Lior Rosenberg, who separately emphasize the expansion of state power in the shaping, planning and creating of new villages through state policies.Footnote 25 In her analysis of state policies for rural reconstruction in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), Robin argues that, as part of the “Constructing a new socialist countryside” campaign, Tibetans are resettled to transform their traditional way of life by creating rational and ordered Tibetan citizens.Footnote 26
For Robin, Bray and Rosenberg, constructing a “new village” has imposed national visions of urban development and modernity upon rural villages. In this context, the initial “backward” village environment is transformed into a new, modern village with an urban image. Similarly, Robin suggests that Tibetans have been relocated to towns in the TAR because the state perceives a need to transform “old” and “backward” villages into a “new” and “modern” community.Footnote 27 In Trika, the role of state policy in the BC initiative shapes Tibetan rural landscapes. In many cases, governments in China view villages as sites through which state rational engagement and intervention can create a new community capable of contributing to “a particular vision of modernity and civilization.”Footnote 28 However, unlike many cases reported in the literature, the BC initiative in Trika has transformed the external appearance of a village into a city-like settlement community, without relocating Tibetan farmers.
According to Bray, the “expansion of urban planning into the countryside marks a major escalation in China’s ongoing project to modernize its built environment,” signalling “the beginning of the end for a distinctive rural way of life.”Footnote 29 Indeed, constructing a “beautiful countryside” in Trika and implementing housing subsidy projects has already led to significant changes in Tibetan housing designs, spatial organization, and patterns of use of rooms in village houses.Footnote 30 The pervasive state planning increasingly taking place in China has defined the modernization of the built environment through a specific and narrow framework.
Focusing on cases in Shandong and Sichuan, Saul Wilson and Xiaorong Zhang argue that rural reconstruction projects, including land acquisition and design of new houses in rural villages, are focused on constructing what they term “image building” – that is, creating a physical image of an urban and wealthy village rather than meeting villagers’ practical needs.Footnote 31 These cases echo Rosenberg’s observations of rural reconstruction in Shandong and Anhui provinces, where state policies for rural redevelopment seek to urbanize villages by “imposing urban-like models of residence on rural residents.”Footnote 32 Beibei Tang describes such urban villages as “not rural but not urban … situated between the common practices of grassroots governance in cities and the countryside.”Footnote 33 In Trika, urban administrative status has not been granted to the village where the BC initiative has been implemented. Instead, the project has been executed in a highly visual manner, aligning with national policies focused on aesthetic decorations and creating a city-like community with urban amenities.
Rural Urbanization
In 2014, China’s central government announced its “New-stye urbanization plan” (xinxing chengzhenhua 新型城镇化), which aims to address the problems created by the previous decades of unprecedented rapid urbanization. In contrast to the traditional concept of urbanization that focuses on (re)building urban centres with an emphasis on the “urbanization of things” (wudejianshe 物的建设), the new urbanization plan is designed to promote urbanization through the development of small cities and towns, a concept often referred to as “townification.”Footnote 34 By advocating for preserving rural culture, the new urbanization plan seeks to create an integrated urban–rural system where cities and the countryside play distinct yet complementary roles.Footnote 35 One of the key goals of the new-style urbanization is the transformation of the rural sector, with a target to reduce the agricultural labour force from 38 per cent of the overall workforce in 2010 to 11.6 per cent by 2030.Footnote 36 For Nick Smith, urban–rural integration entails “the end of the village as a meaningful form of social organization, collective action, and economic survival in contemporary China.”Footnote 37 That is to say, the farmers remaining in the countryside would no longer be engaged in traditional agriculture but would instead become “professional farmers” linked to modern, commercialized production chains.Footnote 38
Rather than attracting rural populations to cities, China’s state has been increasingly investing effort in building cities in rural areas.Footnote 39 Following the declaration of this new urbanization plan, particularly the State Council’s announcement of China’s rural revitalization strategy in 2018,Footnote 40 rural towns and villages have become major sites for China’s current and future urban expansion. In particular, rural urbanization at the township and village levels has in recent years become a crucial part of the latest urbanization drive.Footnote 41 Rather than rural residents moving to urban centres, cities have effectively come to the countryside through top-down administrative directives. That is, the role of urban planning in the countryside has increased dramatically as the new urbanization plan emphasizes promoting the construction of beautiful villages with special characteristics – the BC initiative.Footnote 42
The concept of “rural urbanization,” “in situ urbanization,” or “urbanization from below,” is useful in exploring urbanization in rural areas.Footnote 43 In contrast to city-based urbanization, which is characterized by rural–urban migration and the expansion of megacities, rural urbanization refers to a “phenomenon where rural settlements and their populations transform themselves into urban or quasi-urban settlements without much geographical relocation of the residents.”Footnote 44 This often blurs the distinction between rural and urban. Rosenberg has dubbed this phenomenon “a new style of rural residential communities” in China, noting that it has transcended the normal scope of urbanization, i.e. the expansion of metropolises and resettlement of rural populations into new towns and cities.Footnote 45
Although rural urbanization resembles urban villages, there are differences. The term “urban village” typically refers to “villages in cities” (chengzhongcun 城中村), and mainly those located on the city outskirts. Urban villages are most commonly found in larger cities such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Beijing.Footnote 46 In these contexts, village farmland on the urban peripheries is utilized by rural migrants who hold a non-agricultural hukou 户口 (household registration) but who are excluded from formal urban housing.Footnote 47 In contrast, BC construction in Trika has made the village look more like a city or urban area. Rather than contributing to so-called green development, as emphasized in the project guidelines of the central state, project implementation on the ground significantly contributes to what Wilson and Zhang call “image building” – that is, making the village highly visible and decorative.Footnote 48
“Beautiful Countryside”
The roots of the BC initiative can be traced to Xi Jinping’s 习近平 time as Party secretary of Zhejiang province (2003–2007). In June 2003, Zhejiang launched the rural reconstruction programme, “One thousand model villages, ten thousand renovated villages” (qiancun shifan, wancun zhengzhi 千村示范、 万村整治).Footnote 49 The programme’s goal was to improve rural residents’ quality of life and enhance the rural ecological environment, which is often considered a key contributor to the “dirty,” “chaotic” and “poor” (zang, luan, cha 藏、 乱、 差) conditions that need to be overcome through state-led, rational programmes. State authorities endorsed Zhejiang’s rural reconstruction programme, which then became a model for rural areas across China. For instance, Jiangsu, Jiangxi and Beijing all experimented with the policy in their rural areas.Footnote 50
In 2005, when Xi evaluated the rural reconstruction programme in Anji county 安吉县, Huzhou 湖州市, he endorsed the project outcomes with the now ubiquitous phrase, “clear waters and green mountains are as valuable assets as mountains of gold and silver.” The term “ecological civilization” first surfaced in China’s official documents during the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October 2007. These terms appeared again in November 2012 at the 18th National Congress, stressing the need for the “construction of ecological civilization” in rural areas. The emphasis on ecological well-being and environmental protection led Zhejiang provincial authorities to officially launch the “Construction of beautiful countryside” programme in 2008 in Anji county, a project which received an Inspiration and Action Award from the United Nations Champions of the Earth.Footnote 51 China’s central government authorities have subsequently endorsed programme achievements. Following the notion of “clear waters and green mountains” and the central state’s emphasis on “ecological civilization,” the State Council issued a document in 2014 that specifically focused on the living environment or environmental well-being of rural residents.Footnote 52 The main objective stated in the document was to construct a series of distinct, beautiful and liveable villages (tese de meili yiju cunzhuang 特色的美丽宜居村庄) that are “clean, tidy and convenient” (ganjing, zhengjie, bianjie 干净、 整洁、 便捷).
The central state published another document in tandem with the State Council’s 2014 document concerning improving the living environment of rural residents. This document, titled “Opinions of the CCP Central Committee and the State Council on further promoting the development of ecological civilization,” focused on improving “ecological civilization.”Footnote 53 Accordingly, it stated that China’s focus should now be on environmental improvement over economic growth. Both documents acknowledged China’s severe environmental pollution and ecosystem degradation and stressed the importance of environmental protection.
Based on the declaration to create an “ecological civilization,” particularly in China’s top meeting and policy documents, Sam Geall suggests that China has transformed its growth model, revealing a new strategy for green development.Footnote 54 China has shifted its focus from economic development and urbanization to environmental improvement in line with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang’ s 李克强 conception of greening and constructing ecological civilization as new strategies for achieving sustainable growth in China. This turning point, which emphasizes the ecological environment, represents a new approach to the goals of “Constructing the new socialist countryside.” The State Council’s release of two official documents focusing on improving the environmental well-being of rural residents was followed also in 2014 by the Qinghai provincial government launching the BC initiative to build 300 “plateau beautiful villages.”Footnote 55 The goal is to improve the living environment of rural residents and to create “beautiful fields, beautiful villages and a beautiful life” (nongtian mei, cunzhuang mei, shenghuo mei 农田美、 村庄美、 生活美).Footnote 56
According to official project documents that were made public in 2014 and 2015, Qinghai province stipulated that a total of 18.98 billion yuan would be spent on the BC project, of which 7.21 billion yuan would be jointly provided by the province, county and prefecture, including cities, while 9.12 billion yuan would be provided by relevant programmes targeting the provision of public services and basic facilities.Footnote 57 As of November 2018, completed programme tasks included the installation of 16,601 street lights, the construction of 262 village activity squares, the laying of 1,211.20 km of concrete roads, the building of 92 service centres, the provision of 7,431 large rubbish bins, modifications to the electricity supply and internet provision in 73 villages, and the completion of running water projects in 133 villages.Footnote 58 In addition to providing basic facilities and public services, 88 villages have been “beautified” with improved living environments and visual appeal.Footnote 59 In 2024, it was announced that the Hainan Tibetan Autonomous prefecture 海南藏族自治州 government had spent 2.47 billion yuan on the BC programme to improve the living standards of 5,000 villagers.Footnote 60 The next section specifically delineates how the BC programme shapes subjectivities towards building a city-like village.
Village Urbanization and the Construction of Modern Subjectivities
The initial implementation stage of the BC programme in Trika was not required to be carried out in all villages – only in those near the county town, so that officials could easily view the outcomes of “development.” The department of housing and rural–urban development (DHRUD) is directly and fully responsible for the programme, including implementation. Since 2014, the Trika county DHRUD has selected two to three villages for implementation each year. It then reports these selections, via the prefecture government, to the Qinghai provincial DHRUD, which makes the final decision. The selection of villages is made based on their proximity to the county town and the consensus of the villagers to implement the programme. As with other new socialist countryside programmes, implementing the BC in Trika is also a top-down process in which the provincial government holds the most power within the local governmental hierarchy, while the township government plays a minor role in implementation.Footnote 61
Gyatsa village is, however, an exception. In November 2018, my former high school and university classmates suggested that I visit Gyatsa village because it had been designated as a model of BC in the Tringmar Valley (འཕྲང་དམར་ལུང་པ། Changmu gou 常牧沟). The village’s achievements have been lauded by many, including government officials at the township and county levels, as well as many residents of Trika county. The project was launched in early 2014 after Darbo, the village leader, having seen the newly constructed roads and whitewashed walls in Wangtong village, near Tringmar and the county town, inquired about the BC initiative. He found the constructed concrete roads and concrete walls very attractive and wanted to do something similar in his village. He subsequently approached a construction contractor and several government officials at the county and prefecture levels, all of whom were originally from Gyatsa village, for assistance.
Mr Ma, a construction contractor and one of the wealthiest people in Trika county, had been involved in Trika construction projects, including the implementation of BC initiative, since 2015, and so was very familiar with the programme. After villagers agreed to the programme, Mr Ma and the government officials who were originally from Gyatsa agreed to assist the village in implementing the programme. Since Gyatsa is Mr Ma’s home village, he committed to donating one million yuan to the BC programme, provided higher levels of government approved the programme. Other Gyatsa-native government officials promised to approach higher government officials at the prefecture level to seek additional grants for the programme through their guanxi 关系 networks.Footnote 62
In late 2016, the Gyatsa villagers received approval from the DHRUD of Trika county. This approval was passed down from the provincial DHRUD through the DHRUD of Hainan prefecture. The village received a total grant of 4.6 million yuan, which was transferred from the province to the prefecture, then to the county town and finally to the township government, which then directly paid Mr Ma, the construction contractor. Additionally, through a network of guanxi relations, the village also received one million yuan from the DHRUD of Hainan prefecture, and 300,000 yuan from the county transportation bureau, the latter of which was specifically allocated for the reconstruction of the main village road.Footnote 63 This situation highlights the continuing resilience of guanxi among government officials, despite the strict policies currently enforced in China.
The construction of the BC began in Gyatsa village with the replacement of the old earthen courtyard walls of all 176 households with red-brick walls, which were then whitewashed. To respect local (Tibetan) culture and meet the requirement to build a “distinctive” countryside, the ba tra པ་ཏྲ། (the knot of eternity), one of the eight Tibetan auspicious symbols, was painted on the whitewashed walls (see Figure 1). Additionally, a newly constructed and elaborately carved wooden gate was installed for each household (Figure 2). Village dirt tracks were upgraded to concrete ones that could be kept clean, even during rainy days. Moreover, 165 permanent streetlights were installed along the concrete roads. The earthen walls surrounding the orchards near household courtyards were replaced with fences that allowed the residents to enjoy the views of the green trees. Sewers were connected to each household to prevent sewage from flowing into the village, and a public service centre was built in the village centre.
Figure 1. Whitewashed Courtyard Walls Adorned with a Tibetan Auspicious Symbol
Figure 2. Newly Built Wooden Gate with Decorations
When I asked the villagers about their views of the BC programme, such as how they felt about the housing subsidy projects,Footnote 64 most expressed satisfaction with the project’s outcomes, pointing out the newly designed and decorated household gates and courtyard walls. One male resident, who was in his 50s, noted that implementing the BC made the village cleaner and more beautiful by ensuring that all households’ walls and gates were identical. Similarly, the village leader, Darbo, told me, “Thanks to the project, our village now looks more like a small city. It is now not only a beautiful village to live in but it also has, like a city, modern exercise facilities.”Footnote 65 During my initial interview with Darbo in his house in the winter of 2018, he invited me to check out the aesthetically pleasing courtyard walls and gates, exercise equipment and basketball court at the newly built cultural centre.
As with other Tibetan villages in Trika, nearly all the households in Gyatsa have, in addition to the decorative walls and gates, built what locals call modern (xinshi 新式) houses.Footnote 66 For the villagers in Gyatsa, modernity is embodied not only in the construction of concrete roads, new gates and decorative walls but also in xinshi houses and cars, where “xinshi” literally means “modern” or “new style.” When I visited the village in early April 2024, nearly all Gyatsa households had not only finished off their new houses with elaborately carved decorations but most also owned cars and had even built beautifully designed garage gates adorned with Tibetan symbols. This was not something the villagers had been doing when I was there in 2019. I asked about the garages, how and when they had come up with the idea of building them, and if the state project supported this development. Instead of directly answering my question, one male resident, who was in his late 40s, responded: “Our way of life is now more similar to that of city dwellers – clean, tidy and beautiful, isn’t it? It [village] looks much closer to this,” pointing at an artist’s impression of the village on public display in the village’s cultural centre. He then added, “But we still need to put in a lot of effort if we want the village to look exactly like this.”Footnote 67
The aesthetic rendering of the village, displayed on the village noticeboard, can be understood as design guidelines, set out to shape the villagers’ mindset and attitudes towards constructing a “beautiful” village. Although Gyatsa is a farming village, no farmland appeared in the illustrated design; instead, it depicted identical courtyard walls with gates identical to those the households already possessed. The most prominent feature was the concrete road lined with streetlights, surrounded by neatly manicured lawns and greenery. Cars parked on the village street and in front of some households were also visible in the illustration, and a clean river was shown flowing through the village centre.
When I visited Gyatsa in 2018, the village depicted in the illustrated design was what many villagers aspired to create. During my most recent visit in the summer of 2024, I found that the actual village had largely come to resemble that very design. For instance, when I asked the same question, another resident said, “The government has done many things for us – they built the concrete road, provided streetlights, converted the earthen walls into decorative ones, and eventually made the village more like a small city. They have done almost everything they can, but they cannot convert the villagers into urban citizens. We [villagers] also try our best to do what we can, which is why we built the garages that we think are beautiful and match the beautiful village the government built.”Footnote 68
Tibetan villagers compete to construct new houses to avoid gossip in Trika; if one household purchases a car, others follow suit. Similarly, if one family builds a garage for their newly purchased car, other households do the same to keep up. Living in what locals call a modern environment requires villagers to gradually shift from their traditional agricultural way of life to a more urban lifestyle. This transition contributes to the creation of urban spaces and modern citizens. In other words, Tibetan farmers’ ways of thinking and behaviour towards newly built environments are regulated through precise planning and government rationality, specifically through the BC programme as a form of state intervention. That is, the implementation of the BC can be understood as an instrument of aesthetic governmentality that directs and shapes individual subjectivities to achieve the rural urbanization outcomes desired by the state.
I was intimate enough with most of the villagers I interviewed during my frequent visits to Gyatsa village between November 2018 and March 2019 for them to share with me stories unrelated to my research topic. Darbo, the village leader, became a close friend. Through his introduction, I was able to interview Mr Sun, the vice-director of the DHRUD in the Trika county town, in May 2019. Mr Sun was already waiting for me by the window in a private room when I reached the teahouse in the county town where we were scheduled to meet. Before I had finished introducing myself and my research, Mr Sun interjected: “I know who you are and what you are doing. Darbo already told me about you on the phone. How was the village? Is it like a small city? Well, with a huge effort from the government, we [the government] created a new and beautiful environment in the village. If villagers live in a new environment, they will have new ideas and ways of thinking for the future life. The new environment will also improve their suzhi and, ultimately, they will become modern urbanites (chengliren 城里人).”Footnote 69
According to Mr Sun’s understanding, the aims of village reconstruction under the BC programme included creating modern citizens and a modern village, rather than just beautifying the village. A decade ago, when the village was not the main site of urbanization, technical tasks, such as installing floors and ceramic tiles, whitewashing walls and building red-brick walls, could only be undertaken by skilled Han workers; now these tasks can be completed by local Tibetans. Today, most villagers in their late 30s and 40s, like Han Chinese people, can carry out what locals call professional work, such as laying tiles and floors. When I asked Tsering, who is considered to be one of the top professional workers, about how he had acquired these new technical skills, he stated: “In the past, we didn’t need to do much cement work, but now we have to because there’s so much work, and we can’t afford to hire Han Chinese workers as we did before. Therefore, to make our home look as beautiful and pleasing as the village, the only way is to learn these [technical] skills and do it ourselves.”Footnote 70 For most villagers, ceramic tiles are considered more modern and beautiful than the traditional earthen floors and walls of the village – they look cleaner and serve as a status symbol. Such tiles are commonly seen in cities and thus represent a higher standard of living and a connection to urban life. Thus, the adoption of ceramic tiles can be viewed as both a practical and aesthetic upgrade, showcasing the village’s transition to a more modern, urbanized site.
Overhearing my conversation with Tsering, Tashi remarked: “It’s not that we wanted to learn such professional skills, but the times (shidai 时代 དུས།) forced us to.” When I asked him to elaborate, he smiled and said, “Since we now live in a city-like village, we also need to learn urban citizens’ skills.”Footnote 71 No one in Gyatsa learned what they considered to professional skills from trained engineers; they acquired these skills from Han Chinese migrant workers at construction sites while they were engaged in labour migration to cities such as Xining. Through such exposure, Gyatsa villagers not only learned the necessary skills for (re)constructing a modern village but also gained new ideas for starting up small enterprises in Trika county town and other nearby counties in Qinghai. For example, one resident had recently opened a small mobile phone shop in the county town, while others had set up small restaurants in Gonghe 共和county in Hainan prefecture. The (re)construction of the modern village and the activities associated with the BC initiative work to transform the ways of thinking and behaviour of individuals to produce governable subjects who are market-oriented actors and modern citizens who contribute to the national growth of urbanization.
Mr Sun did not mention anything related to green development during our interview. I asked him if any green elements were associated with the BC programme, as emphasized in the official documents about the project, and if so, what they were. Similar to many of the other responses I had received, he pointed to the large dustbins placed in the village and the sewage pipes as examples of green elements of the project. When I further asked if the BC initiative was intended to solve environmental problems or build a city-like village, Mr Sun replied: “Both,” without hesitation. Then, after a pause, he added: “I do not know when exactly, but sooner or later, all the villages will become like Gyatsa village.”Footnote 72 Mr Sun understood that villages will remain where they are but will increasingly resemble cities in appearance.
Villagers and government officials, including the contractors, understand the provision of basic facilities and public services as material improvements, greening and green development. This conceptualization of green development is based on practices such as not burning rubbish, treating sewage, having rubbish bins in the village, and the reconstruction of red-brick walls, concrete roads and orchard fences. Darbo answered my question about the villagers’ understanding of the green development associated with the BC with the following account:
Beyond providing basic facilities and public services, the construction of the BC heavily emphasizes green development. The construction of concrete roads is a good example. Before implementing the xiangmu 项目 [BC] in the village, nearly everything outside our house was earth, especially the road. It was muddy everywhere when it rained. This made it dirty everywhere, sometimes in the house, as people came in and out. Because now [the road] is concrete, it is clean even when it rains, so this is also greening and green development.Footnote 73
Although Trika’s BC project has not involved resettlement, it has significantly changed rural landscapes. Rather than using a Tibetan term, villagers use the Chinese term lüse 绿色/lüsehua绿色化 to describe “green” or “greening.” For Gyatsa villagers, “green” development is embodied in material improvement, meaning orderliness and cleanness, i.e. “green” is associated with the same characteristics as “development.” Local officials’ interpretation of greening is similar to that expressed by a Tibetan employee working at the Trika DHRUD: “the provision of basic facilities and services such as concrete roads, white walls and sewers keep the village environment clean and beautiful, which eventually contributes to environmental protection. Therefore, all these activities are green activities working towards green development.”Footnote 74
Gyatsa’s Tibetan residents should not be considered as passive victims of the state-led BC programme. In nearly all stages of the initiative, the villagers actively sought and participated in project implementation in order to acquire what they understood to be a city lifestyle. Villagers’ willingness to adopt and participate in the implementation of the initiative was not due to the state’s efforts in improving environmental protection or green development, but rather because of the amenities the programme brought. Following the programme’s implementation, most elders in Gyatsa now perceive themselves as living in a city rather than a village. While pointing at the newly built streetlights with his right hand, one resident stated: “We now have almost everything urban citizens have, and [the village] is not a village at all now but a city (chengshi 城市). Look at those streetlights (glog sdong གློག་སྡོང་༏). Only cities have those, but now we do too.”Footnote 75 Another elderly man joined the conversation: “Did you ever imagine that such things would appear in a rural village like this?”Footnote 76 Of all the public services and basic facilities delivered by the programme, it is the streetlights that have impressed villagers the most. According to their understanding, streetlights belong to urban citizens and symbolize the city. This perception is largely shaped by the fact that Tibetans, particularly the elders, have generally lived in rural areas and have had less exposure to cities. China’s rural areas, particularly those in Qinghai, have undergone significant changes since the reform in the 1980s. But, unlike rural regions in the Global North, the introduction of such modern facilities and services in rural areas, especially to Tibetan villages in Trika, is a very recent development.Footnote 77
Similar to the Tibetans in Demo and Bragmar villages, who construct and interpret their versions of modernity, i.e. the newly built modern houses,Footnote 78 Gyatsa villagers are forming their own understanding of “urbanization,” which significantly differs from that of the Global North and other parts of China. For most Gyatsa elders, urbanization does not necessarily mean crowds of people living in a city filled with tall buildings and industries; it is instead embodied in the programme’s amenities – concrete roads and red-brick walls. In this sense, I suggest China’s urbanization manifests in towns, cities and farming villages.
For villagers and local government officials, village urbanization encompasses both greening and urbanization. Their understanding derives from the narratives of national policy documents, which extensively use environment-related terms such as “greening,” “green development,” “ecological civilization” and “conservation,” declaring them to be national priorities. However, the provision of modern facilities and services, as described above, is considered vital to achieving these environmental goals. Thus, the BC programme focuses on material improvements rather than on environmental conservation and green development.
Concrete and Politics of Greening
Concrete is widely recognized as a material that contributes to environmental degradation. As Jonathan Watts points out, it is “the most destructive material on earth.”Footnote 79 Others have made similar claims that “concrete is beautiful and versatile but, unfortunately, it ticks all the boxes in terms of environmental degradation.”Footnote 80 Using concrete to build roads and walls damages the natural environment and threatens indigenous cultures and ecological relationships between livestock, crops and humans.Footnote 81 In the case of BC project, the cost of using concrete to build roads and walls is considerably higher than that of green-related activities, such as waste management. For example, in Gyatsa, out of the 5.5 million yuan allocated for development, 4.06 million yuan was specifically allocated for brick walls and a service centre, 300,000 yuan for a concrete road, 607,000 yuan for streetlights; only about 500,000 yuan went towards waste management and the sewer system.Footnote 82
Geographer Emily Yeh argues that green development projects in China should not be viewed solely as environmental initiatives, but rather as political projects that create new rationalities of rule and forms of subjectivity.Footnote 83 Indeed, most green community projects are spatial strategies tied to the state’s primary goals of economic growth and urban expansion. The green elements incorporated into the programme, as François Godement describes them, are “purely face” and “talk.”Footnote 84 This aligns with Lisa Hoffman’s argument that the idea that the environment can be considered as a site of governmental intervention implies that “nature or the ‘environment,’ is a legitimate domain of action.”Footnote 85
As Pow points out, any aesthetic practice is “fundamentally a form of social and spatial intervention that constitutes an exercise of power.”Footnote 86 In Trika, the power is exercised through aesthetic norms and a shared sense of what is modern. In other words, rural villages, for the state, are demonstration sites through which state action can lead to the construction of a new form of the village in line with the state’s vision of urbanization and modernity. The newly built village environment is a highly aesthetic and governable object in the name of green development. In this context, aesthetic experience is a greening strategy to produce new forms of urban space and subjects in the countryside. Rather than bringing rural residents to cities, the state seeks to create cities in the countryside, which means continued economic growth and a representation of modernization in China.Footnote 87
Conclusion
Scholars focusing on China’s urban centres have devoted much attention to state-led green urban projects, including the construction of so-called eco-cities, green cities and the aesthetic form of green communities. These projects were launched and implemented as exemplary efforts to invest in and improve China’s degraded environments. However, these projects are always entwined in creating political and economic profits, with the state’s goal of governance as the priority.Footnote 88
Building on these insights and employing analytics of aesthetic governmentality, this paper examines village urbanization and green development in rural areas, delineating how China’s shift towards green development has integrated environmental elements such as greening, ecological civilization and beautification into urbanization projects. Specifically, it analyses how the BC initiative, which is promoted as green development, is a form of aesthetic governmentality, shaping rural subjectivities to serve national urbanization goals. The official aim of constructing a “beautiful countryside” is to create tidy, pleasing and visually appealing villages through green development. However, I have shown that the greening or green development aspects of this programme also function as techniques for producing governable modern subjects. More specifically, the programme shapes rural villagers into subjects by encouraging them to learn to be urbanities by acquiring modern skills and embracing what they perceive as a modern, city-like lifestyle, ultimately contributing to the rural urbanization process.
To this extent, this paper contributes to the literature on aesthetic governmentality by extending the theorization of aesthetic governmentality through a study of the making of rural urbanization in contemporary China. It is important to note that, for Ghertner, aesthetic norms functioned as more effective government technologies than the calculations and statistics emphasized by the Foucauldian concept.Footnote 89 However, these norms were not internalized by simple acceptance; nor were they completely rejected by Delhi’s slum dwellers, who instead appropriated aesthetic norms by aspiring for improved housing and ultimately becoming world-class citizens. However, in my research site, the aesthetic norms were effective – local residents embraced them and they did not involve displacement. At the same time, villagers appreciated the material improvements achieved through the BC programme. Since beautifying the village was a common objective shared by local officials and villagers, aesthetics and the “beautiful” visual order legitimized governmental intervention and thus helped to achieve the objectives of rural urbanization through aesthetic elements.
In addition, by closely examining the implementation of greening and green development, and emphasizing their role in the BC programme, this initiative can be understood as a response to environmental degradation. Nevertheless, in practice, the BC programme prioritizes material improvements over environmental conservation and green development. As Pow notes, while the Chinese state has carried out a series of environmental efforts in response to urban environmental challenges, the environment has often been a moving target for policy intervention.Footnote 90 This is equally true in rural areas. In other words, greening and green development, at least in the context of the BC programme’s implementation, are not truly “green” but are instead aimed at producing new urban-like spaces and reshaping rural subjectivities. In this sense, the BC programme plays a crucial role in achieving the national “China Dream” by transforming rural villages into modernized, city-like spaces.
Lastly, most existing literature on constructing eco-cities, ecological civilization and green development in China has focused on urban centres. In contrast, I have underscored the need to critically engage with rural green development. Most interestingly, the villagers have come to view the programme as delivering both “greening” – in the form of tidiness and a visual city aesthetic – and the amenities they associate with urban living. Ultimately, the “beautiful countryside” programme represents a form of “village urbanization,” where the concepts of “urban” and “green” converge in imagining China’s future.
Acknowledgements
The fieldwork for this research was supported by the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Award (1764238) and the University of Colorado Boulder, while the writing phase was funded by the National Social Science Fund of China (22CMZ016). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2019 AAS conference in Denver, where I benefited greatly from the comments and critiques of Andrew Fischer, Andrew Grant, Jarmila Ptáčková and many other participants. I would also like to thank Joseph Alter, Kelly Anne Hammond and other workshop members for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of this paper during the “Boundary pushing in Asian studies” workshop organized by the Journal of Asian Studies. I am especially grateful for the comments and suggestions provided by the editor and an anonymous reviewer. My deepest appreciation goes to Emily Yeh, whose mentoring and guidance have been instrumental in this paper and throughout my PhD studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. All errors remain my own.
Competing interests
None.
Duojie ZHAXI (Dorje Tashi) is an associate professor in the School of Ethnology and Sociology at Qinghai Minzu University, China. His research centres around urbanization, development and migration in western China. He is also interested in Han Chinese migrants and entrepreneurs in Nepal.
