Description
Book SynopsisHow China’s borderlands transformed politically and culturally throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
China’s land borders, shared with fourteen other nations, are the world’s longest. Like all borders, they are not just lines on a map but also spaces whose histories and futures are defined by their frontier status. An ambitious appraisal of China’s borderlands, Shifting Sands addresses the full scope and importance of these regions, illustrating their transformation from imperial backwaters to hotbeds of resource exploitation and human development in the age of neoliberal globalization.
Xiaoxuan Lu brings to bear an original combination of archival research, fieldwork, cartography, and landscape analysis, broadening our understanding of the political economy and cultural changes in China’s borderlands in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. While conventional wisdom looks to the era of Deng Xiaoping
Table of Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- Preface
- Introduction. Stratigraphy of China’s Borderlands
- Part I. Exchanges and Flows
- The International Development of China
- Infrastructure: China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO)
- Logistics: China Railway Container Transport Corporation (CRCT)
- Expertise: China National Machinery Industry Corporation (SINOMACH)
- Resources: China Oil and Foodstuffs Corporation (COFCO)
- Part II. Corridors and Concessions
- China and the Transborder Subregions in Asia
- Silk Road Urbanism: New Town Development in the China-Laos Borderlands
- The Xinjiang Model: Road Construction in the Kyrgyzstan-China Borderlands
- Shan-shui Memory: Water Commodification in the China-Korea Borderlands
- Part III. Settlements and Memories
- Characteristics of China’s Border Settlements
- Southwestern Borderlands
- Northwestern Borderlands
- Northeastern Borderlands
- Epilogue
- Index
