Chinese Greenhouses: An Echo of the Soviet Past (Siberian Cases)

Abstract

The article discusses the presence of so-called Chinese greenhouses and the agricultural activities of Chinese farmers in Eastern Siberia. I attempt to analyze the phenomenon of Chinese greenhouses through the theory of James Scott and explain the possibility of agricultural activities of Chinese agrarians in Siberia as a result of the state project’s failure. I demonstrate that the agrarian reform of the 1990s created conditions under which large-scale producers were forced to invite residents of the PRC as a wage-labor for the production of vegetable crops. Subsequently, this circumstance, combined with the failures of implementing the reform plans, contributed to the independent cultivation of Russian lands by Chinese agrarians.