Not at All Costs: Frontier Modernization Schemes and Ethnic Minority Livelihood Debates in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands

Abstract:The Chinese and Vietnamese states are encouraging or endorsing numerous schemes to “modernize” what they deem to be the physical and cultural frontiers of their political territories. Proceeding at a rapid pace across the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands, frontier projects frequently enclose resources at the core of ethnic minority livelihoods for the sake of capitalist expansion, while promoting specific visions of what appropriate, “civilized” frontier livelihoods should be. Though researchers are beginning to direct their attention to such individual transformations, we still know very little about their similarities and differences across space. In this article, we analyze four frontier schemes strongly encouraged by either the Chinese or Vietnamese state: hydropower and house renovation projects directly impacting ethnic minority Handai communities in China's Yunnan Province and state-led agricultural and marketplace restructuring just across the border in northern Vietnam, with important consequences for minority Hmong households. Drawing on the emic, subjective perspectives of ethnic minority populations in these contact zones, we examine and compare how they employ culturally informed livelihood criteria and decision-making processes to accept, rework, or, in some cases, carefully resist the consequences of such frontier schemes.