Powers of exclusion: A case study of state-led large scale rubber development in Vietnam’s north-western region

ABSTRACT

Cash crop development has been instrumental for economic growth in many countries. However, this intervention has negatively affected many local communities. The global rubber boom in the early 2000s prompted the state-owned Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG) to scramble for land to expand their rubber plantations. This paper examines the mechanisms and processes associated with state-led large scale rubber development in Vietnam’s north-western region. The development of large-scale rubber plantation in the region was established on villager’s devolved crop lands. Using the powers of exclusion framework developed by Hall et al. (2011), the paper asks how government regulations, legitimation and force are used to enroll villager’s land into rubber development. Particularly, I unearth how these powers were used to force villagers to engage in contract farming – dubbed as a ‘joint venture’ by VRG. In addition, I examine how government and VRG continued to use these powers to stamp out local resistance and retain land. The unfolding contestation has important implications for state-society relations.

KEYWORDS:

• Rubber
• land-grabbing
• exclusion
• state-society relations
• Vietnam

1. Introduction

From around 2002, the global rubber market boomed, with prices increasing six-fold before beginning to decline in 2011 (Junquera et al., 2020). This produced profound impacts in terms of land use changes and social relations in many countries (Baird, 2017; Fox & Castella, 2013; Fox, 2014; Kenney Lazar et al., 2018; Ziegler et al., 2009). The impacts were particularly substantial in Southeast Asia where approximately 90% of the global supply of natural rubber is produced. In Vietnam, this boom strongly motivated the state-owned Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG) to access villager’s landholdings in order to expand rubber production. The authoritarian central government – which dictates development priorities and land use planning and allocation in Vietnam (Hayton, 2010; London & London, 2014) – was instrumental in assisting the development of rubber plantations. This paper examines the mechanisms and processes associated with state-led large scale rubber development in the country’s north-western region. Using the powers of exclusion framework developed by Hall and Li (2011), the paper examines how regulations, legitimation and force worked together to enroll villager’s land (and labor) for rubber development. While the market is an important mechanism of exclusion according to Hall and Li (2011), this power was less evident in this case. Thus this paper primarily examines the role of government regulation, legitimation and force. The adoption of the powers of exclusion framework as an analytical lens helps reveal the development narrative and technologies used by the government to enroll villager’s land for rubber development. Previous studies have examined the development of large-scale rubber plantations in Vietnam’s north-western region. For example, Dao (2015) highlights that the development of rubber was enabled by the Vietnamese government’s ambitious program of industrialization and economic modernization. The government translated this vision into practice through policies which mobilized villager’s land for rubber production (Dao, 2015). Luu et al. (2020) argue that rubber development in north-west Vietnam is a process of state re-territorialization and re-legalization. I argue that earlier studies on state-led land grabs placed a strong emphasis on government regulations, and much less on legitimation and force. I suggest that the powers of exclusion framework allows for a more novel and nuanced understanding of state-led cash crop development in this case. Empirically, my study highlights the dynamics of state-led land grab and devastating impacts on local communities than land grabs seen in other places. Theoretically, I demonstrate that the use of regulations, legitimation and force were interwoven and the boundary between these mechanisms often indistinctive and often time collapses. Section 2 of this paper describes the powers of exclusion framework as elaborated by Hall and Li (2011). Section 3 presents my research methods and fieldwork sites. Section 4 provides background on the development of the state-controlled rubber industry in Vietnam. Focusing on regulations, legitimation and force, Section 5 examines how these powers worked together to separate villagers from the land and render it and villager’s labor to rubber development. Section 6 concludes the paper and discusses implications for state-society relations and application of the powers of exclusion framework to analyze land use contestations.

2. The powers of exclusion framework

In Southeast Asia, the development of cash crops such as rubber, coffee and timber has changed land use practices, resource governance and social relations dramatically (Cramb & McCarthy, 2016; Nevin et al., 2008). Literature on the global ‘land grab’ emphasizes the process through which common or smallholder land is shifted to private actors for commodity production (Borras et al., 2011; Edelman et al., 2013). Examining the processes that exclude villagers from their land, Hall and Li (2011) highlight four mechanisms at work. The first is regulations that ‘determine the boundaries between pieces of land, prescribes the kinds of land use within those boundaries, determine ownership and usufruct claims and particular groups of actors with different types of claims that are legally backed’ (Hall et al., pp. 15–16). These rules and regulations change and are not always consistent (ibid) and new regulations are often built on existing or past regulations (Vatn & Vedeld, 2013). The second mechanism is force which includes sanctions, the use or threat to use violence, which may be adopted by different actors to exclude villagers from land (Vatn & Vedeld, 2013, p. 16). The state claims itself as the only actor with legitimate power to use force (see Peluso & Lund, 2011; Sikor & Lund, 2009), but there are other actors such as private companies that have used force to exclude villagers from their land (Global Witness, 2022). The third power is legitimation, understood as ‘justifications of what is or what should be’, ‘appeals to moral values’ and ‘claims to scientific knowledge’ which ‘can be used to trump conflicting claims and justify exclusion’ (Hall & Li, 2011, p. 18). According to Hall and Li (2011), a state’s legitimacy rests on a politically stable relationship between the state and its citizens. Where citizens willingly accept and follow state rules and regulations, this has the effect of legitimizing state authority (P. To & Mahanty, 2019; Sikor & Lund, 2009). Legitimacy can be sustained where the state secures economic opportunities for its citizens, along with other objectives such as territorial security, and protection of political rights (ibid). The fourth mechanism is the influence of the market on both land and commodity values. Villagers are excluded from land if the price is too high for them. For example, in Vietnam’s Central Highlands region where smallholder coffee production is prominent, land has a high market value, which excludes poorer houses from purchasing land and generating income from coffee production (Agergaard et al., 2009). A similar example is found in Indonesia where poor smallholder cocoa producers in Sulawesi are unable to buy inputs and therefore have to sell their land to better-off households and became landless (Li, 2014).

This paper focuses on the role of state power in land use planning and development, exploring how these powers were used to enroll villager’s land (and labor) for rubber development. Specifically, the paper focuses on how the three key state powers of regulation, legitimacy and force have worked together to separate villagers from their land for the development of large-scale rubber plantations in north-western Vietnam. Although the market is an important mechanism of exclusion (Hall & Li, 2011), this paper focuses less on market mechanisms. Before exploring these three interwoven powers, Section 3 describes the methods used for data collection.

3. Methods

This paper draws on data collected in 2019–2020. In this period, I made three trips to Mai Son district in Son La province in north-western Vietnam. Son La province is one of three provinces in this region that were targeted by the VRG as suitable for large-scale rubber production. In Mai Son, I conducted fieldwork in Cu Pe and Mai Quynh villages, which are largely populated with Thai ethnic minorities.¹ Mai Quynh was established in 2007 when 35 households originally from Lem village in Quynh Nhai district displaced by the Son La hydroelectric dam were relocated here.² At the time of my visit in 2019 the village had 43 households. Cu Pe was established well before Mai Quynh, in the 1960s and had 193 households at the time of my fieldwork; including ten displaced households from Lem village. In each village, I organized a focus group discussion (FGD) with a diverse range of participants, including the village chairman, farmers, women, war veterans, youth and elderly villagers. These participants represented key groups in the village and were selected based on my consultations with the heads of each group. In total, 6–8 participants joined each meeting. These FGDs allowed me to collect information concerning village history, land use practices and land use changes, history of rubber development in the village, surrounding natural resources, livelihoods and livelihood changes. Based on the FGD, a list of villagers intended for in-depth interviews was compiled. In each village, I also conducted 15 in-depth interviews with households involved in rubber cultivation, including those with members who were employed by the Son La Joint Stock Rubber Company (Son La Rubber Company in short) – a VRG subsidiary – to work on the plantation. The interview focused on household land use practices and change, income sources and the impact of the loss of land for rubber cultivation. Additionally, these interviews sought to understand villager’s perceptions of and responses to rubber production. While in the field, I observed villagers land-based activities and visited rubber plantations. In addition, I interviewed staff from Law and Policy for Sustainable Development (LPSD) – a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that provided support and advocacy work for villagers in Mai Quynh and Cu Pe. My interview with LPSD staff focused on LPSD’s understanding about land use practices and rubber development in the villages, their views toward the roles of different actors including government officials and the Son La Rubber Company in the establishment of the plantation, their advocacy work with villagers and relationship with local government actors at commune and district levels.

My fieldwork was conducted at a time when tensions between villagers and Son La Rubber Company was high. This tension was formed because villagers had not received the benefits from investing their land and labor in rubber production that had been promised by company and government representatives and wanted their land back. This tension made access to government officials and the company highly difficult. Both commune and district officials turned down my meeting requests. Although unable to meet with them in the field, I was invited to a workshop held by VUSTA (Vietnam Union for Science and Technology) in March 2019 that discussed issues concerning rubber development in the north-western region. The workshop was attended by representatives from VRG and all rubber companies in the north-west, including Son La Rubber Company. Local government officials from Son La, Lai Chau and Dien Bien province and staff from LSPD and some local NGOs also attended. Through LSPD support, five villagers from Cu Pe and Mai Quynh were invited to the workshop. At the workshop, I was able to gain information shared by workshop participants including rubber companies and government officials. I witnessed tense interactions between the villagers and rubber companies, particularly when discussing villager’s income derived from rubber, benefit distribution, and villager’s desire to get back their land and the company’s response.

For this paper, consulted relevant technical reports, including the report from Forest Trends that examines the impacts of rubber development on local livelihoods in Son La province. I also consulted government reports, policies, guidelines, and media reports on the Vietnamese rubber industry and plantation development in Son La in particular. Section 4 provides further background on the rapid expansion of rubber production in Vietnam over the past two decades.

4. Recent rubber development in Vietnam

The Vietnamese rubber sector is export oriented. Rising global demand for rubber from the early 2000s and export revenue has driven a rapid expansion of rubber plantations. By 2021 Vietnam had almost 939,000 ha devoted to rubber cultivation (Phan, 2022) and became the third largest rubber producer in the world (after Thailand and Indonesia), deriving nearly US$7 billion in revenue from exports of natural and processed rubber (Phan, 2022).³ Smallholder land holdings represent approximately half of Vietnam’s total rubber cultivation area (ibid). The other half belongs to rubber companies, most of which are subsidiary companies of VRG.⁴ Rubber is now one of the most important export crops for Vietnam.

After gaining independence in 1954 the Vietnamese government nationalized all land, enshrining the words ‘land belongs to the state’ in the Constitution. The state decides how the land should be used for what purpose and manages land through a system of state-owned enterprises (now state companies) and cooperatives. State-owned enterprises manage vast tracts of land to produce a range of export cash crops, including rubber, coffee, and tea. For paddy land, the state established a collective system under which villagers contributed their land and labor to cooperatives and received a share of harvest in return. During the 1980s, in an effort to decentralize both the economy and land management, the central government dismantled the state-owned enterprises that did not perform well or were in budget deficit and allocated the land managed by these enterprises to individual households. In terms of forestland, a large number of forestry enterprises were dissolved, and 3.5 million ha of land classified as production forest land was given to 1.4 million households (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, 2019). The state also dissolved the agricultural cooperative system during this period, with the collective paddy land granted to households based on available labor. The state retained companies that performed well. At present, state companies and local households are the two largest land user groups in Vietnam.

The rubber boom that characterized the first decade of the 2000s (Fox & Castella, 2013; Ziegler et al., 2009) drove VRG to scramble for land to expand their plantations. Cambodia and Laos became new frontiers for VRG (Fox & Castella, 2013; Kenney Lazar et al., 2018). In Vietnam, the central highlands and north-western region become new areas of production. By December 2012, the central government had approved 227 rubber projects, totaling 116,136 ha. Approximately 79% of this land was classified by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) as ‘poor forest’ land (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, 2013) enabling it to be turned over for rubber cultivation, although a study by P. To and Tran (2014) shows that there was a large amount of quality timber stock on the land. The remaining 21% was classified as ‘barren land’. In the Central Highlands, before rubber was grown, this ‘poor forest’ and ‘barren land’ had been managed by state forest companies. The process through which control over this land shifted from state forest companies to state-controlled rubber companies was decided exclusively by the central government and occurred fairly quickly. However, in the north-western region where I conducted my study the government had already allocated forestland to villagers. Land for rubber development in this region therefore had to be sourced from villager’s land. The government assigned VRG to negotiate land access arrangements with villagers. Rubber plantations were rapidly established in Son La, Dien Bien and Lai Chau – the three provinces targeted in the north-west in the first round of large scale plantation development. When rubber was first introduced in these three provinces in 2007, 70 ha of rubber was planted and around 50 households were involved; by 2012 this had grown to 23,030 ha with 18,165 households involved (Vietnam Rubber Group, 2019). The development and expansion of rubber was accelerated through contract farming arrangements, dubbed as a ‘joint venture’ by VRG. In this joint venture, villagers contributed land and labor while the company provided other inputs such as seedlings, fertilizers and was responsible for cultivation techniques and market access for products at a later stage. Section 5 examines the key mechanisms that enabled the development of large-scale rubber plantations in these provinces, focusing on Son La, where I conducted fieldwork.

5. Large scale rubber development in Vietnam’s north-western region

VRG is the largest state-owned organization in Vietnam’s agriculture sector (Vietnam Rubber Group, 2019). At present, the group has 107 subsidiaries located in 37 provinces in Vietnam, as well as Laos and Cambodia. Among these subsidiaries, there are 65 rubber plantation companies, with a total land production area of 400,000 ha.⁵ In Vietnam’s north-western region, VRG established nine companies, with Son La Rubber Company (hereafter the rubber company) charged with rubber development in Son La province. At present, these nine companies manage 28,900 ha of land for rubber cultivation, all of which are held under contract farming or ‘joint venture’ arrangements (Vietnam Rubber Group, 2019). These companies accessed these land areas through three ‘powers of exclusion’: government regulations, legitimation, and force, as explored below.

5.1. Government regulations and implementation

Central government regulations have played a vital role in mobilizing villager’s land for rubber development. As a state-owned entity, VRG’s close connection to the government was key to expanding land access. In 2006, VRG submitted letters 732/TTg-CSVN on 29 March and 1374/TTg-CSVN on 13 June to the Prime Minister (PM) seeking approval of VRG’s 2005–2010 Business Plan and Vision until 2015. The plan detailed activities for a rapid expansion of VRG’s plantations. On 17 July 2006, the PM approved the plan by the Decision 966/QD-TTg, as well as committing the government to assist the expansion of rubber cultivation through regulatory changes determining land access and use. The decision states: ‘The government will continue to restructure the state-owned forest and agricultural enterprises … to make land available for rubber expansion.’ (Prime Minister’s Decision 966/QD-TTg, p. 2). In essence, the PM agreed to transfer land previously controlled by state forest and agricultural companies to VRG for the development of rubber. The decision also stated that in areas that lacked state forest and agricultural companies, VRG was allowed to mobilize villager’s land: “In the remote areas inhabited by ethnic minorities … [the government will] … support the development of infrastructure system to facilitate the establishment of large-scale rubber plantation and to settle down villagers’ lives.” (ibid. p. 2). As labor is an important input for rubber development, the decision recommended that VRG ‘recruits laborers … for the expansion … [and] prioritizes the villagers who were ethnic minorities.’ (ibid., p. 2).

As per the PM’s request, in September 2008 MARD issued Decision 2855 which classifies the rubber tree as a ‘multi-purpose’ tree. This classification enabled the conversion of forest and villager agricultural land into rubber plantations. The PM’s Decision 966 and MARD’s Decision 2855 served as the regulatory basis for the formation of a land frontier for large scale rubber expansion in north-western Vietnam.

The subsequent Prime Minister’s Decision 750/QD-TTg on 3 June 2009 which approved the rubber sector’s master plan until 2015 and vision until 2020 was another important piece of regulation that facilitated rubber development. This decision allowed the cultivation of rubber on ‘unproductive agricultural land’ and ‘forestland with poor forest cover.’ The decision emphasized the need for a rapid expansion to increase export revenue and identified the country’s north-western region a key region for future development, with a goal for 50,000 ha of large-scale rubber plantations to be established in this region by 2020. The decision highlighted that villagers’ land was the most important source of land for rubber.

Following the enactment of these decisions and central government regulations, provincial authorities quickly embraced rubber into their development agendas. In Son La in early 2007 the provincial Politburo – the most powerful provincial government agency – signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with VRG for the implementation of the central government’s regulations in the province. Similar MOUs with other provinces in the region were also signed. Provincial authorities then rushed to implement new guidelines to assist with the expansion of rubber. In Son La, a land survey team was established to identify potential areas for rubber cultivation as a first step. Provincial Resolution 254 in December 2008 approved the Son La Rubber Master Plan for 2007–2011 period and Vision until 2020. Resolution 254 stated that the province had the potential to develop up to 145,300 ha of rubber. This area of land was identified in 87 communes spread across 11 districts (out of the 13 districts located in Son La). The resolution emphasized that the VRG subsidiary, Son La Rubber Company, was the only organization charged with rubber development in the province.

All the land identified in the Son La land survey as suitable for rubber cultivation was higher quality land with easy access. The land selected for rubber had to meet two requirements: the land area must be contiguous with each plot 30 ha in size; and the location must be below 600 meters altitude with less than 30 degrees in slope and at least a 70-centimeter topsoil layer. Resolution 254 was explicit about where this land could be found in the province: ‘the land with annual crops … near the road and the residential area was suitable for planting, nurturing, tapping and transporting of the [rubber] product.’ (Son La People Council’s Resolution, 2008, p. 4) Nearly 70% of the land identified in the master plan was villager’s crop land.⁶

Resolution 254 also requested the strong presence of provincial agencies in the development of rubber. Specifically, the resolution requested provincial and district government agencies ‘manage, supervise and strictly implement … the regulations [concerning rubber development].’ It also demanded relevant agencies act swiftly to “fasten land survey and boundary demarcation, identification of land owners, issuance of land use certificate … [and] expedite villagers’ handing their land to the company.” (ibid) Following the resolution, key officials from province, district and commune levels were enlisted to facilitate the implementation. A steering committee made up of officials from provincial departments was established with their offices located in all districts where rubber was planned. Representatives from the rubber company were also on the committee. The committee was tasked with the rapid rolling out of rubber in their respective districts. The district committee held meetings in each village to explain to the villagers how the joint venture would work. According to villager accounts, in these meetings, the committee members told villagers that joining the joint venture would definitely lead to financial benefits when the rubber trees reached maturity in 6–7 years. A villager from Cu Pe that attended the meeting disclosed that villagers were told they would ‘just need to sit back and gain money [and] do not need to worry about anything as the government and rubber company will take care of all … [and that] income from rubber will be much higher than that from agricultural crops’ (Key informant interview, 16 December 2019).

Villagers quickly felt the impact of these national and local regulations. A survey conducted by Forest Trends in six villages across three districts of Son La provinces in 2019 reveals that 80–90% of households in these villages had entrusted approximately half their total cultivation land to the joint venture with the Son La Rubber Company (Forest Trends, 2019). Their remaining land was identified as unsuitable for rubber. Usually, this was poorer quality land that was sloping, fragmented, and had uneasy access.

In Mai Quynh and Cu Pe villages, rubber development was ramped up following Resolution 254. The steering committee organized three meetings in each village to disseminate information regarding the joint venture arrangements. The committee members paid visits to households who were hesitant and personally requested them to give up the land. In Mai Quynh, all 36 households who had only just relocated there after being displaced by the Son La hydroelectric dam were asked to entrust all the land they were about to receive from the government as compensation for displacement. On arrival they had discovered that 20 ha of prime land in Mai Quynh had already been allocated for rubber development. A villager shared: ‘The village chairman led us to the field and showed us the location of our land. He then told us we were not allowed to work the land as it was already planned for rubber.’ (Key informant interview, 20 December 2019). Similarly in Cu Pe, 97 households entrusted 47 ha of their best land to the rubber company under the joint venture arrangements. Rubber started to be cultivated in the two villages in 2008.

Provincial authorities also mobilized financial resources for rolling out rubber in Son La. Resolution 254 stated that US$14.3 million was committed for the implementation.⁷ This was a substantial amount for Son La, a relatively poor province with a heavy financial reliance on the central government (Vu, 2015). According to the resolution, this amount was intended to compensate villagers for the loss of fruit trees and crops on land taken for rubber cultivation. However, part of these funds were also used to improve infrastructure in the villages with rubber. In Mai Quynh and Cu Pe the provincial government used the funds to upgrade the village road, build two deep wells and install a water supply facility.

Although villagers entrusted their land to the rubber project, they did not have a say in the project design and implementation. Provincial authorities and the rubber company made all the important decisions regarding the terms and structure of the joint venture, including benefit sharing. Despite most households contributing as much as 50% (or more) of their cultivation land, Resolution 254 stated clearly that villager’s land entrusted to the joint venture was equivalent to an investment of 10%. Inputs from the company, such as seedlings, fertilizers and facilitating market access, were valued as 90% of the investment. As a result, villagers were entitled to 10% of benefits and the company received 90%.

Labor was instrumental for rubber development. As villagers land was allocated to rubber, their labor was freed up and became available for rubber production. Resolution 254 allowed the rubber company to recruit villagers for rubber work. The workload in the first two years of plantation establishment was substantial, including land preparation, moving seedlings and chemicals to plantation area, tree planting, among others. On average, each laborer received approximately 1–3 million Vietnamese Dong (US$59–176.5) per month for the work – a significant amount for many households. Thus, both central government and Provincial Regulation 254 were important mechanisms that enabled the development of rubber in the region and in Son La province in particular. However, there were other mechanisms at work, including legitimation as I describe below.

5.2. Legitimation: Rubber as a strategy for poverty alleviation and environmental protection

Similar to regulations, legitimation was vital for gaining public acceptance for rubber development in the north-western region of Vietnam. To enroll villagers, both the central government and the rubber company pitched rubber as an instrument for poverty alleviation and environmental protection. The north-western region is the poorest in the country. The three provinces where rubber was initially introduced – Son La, Lai Chau and Dien Bien – are among the ten poorest provinces in Vietnam (General Statistics Office, 2018). Deputy Prime Minister Truong Vinh Trong, who was responsible for the development of the region, suggested that a range of reasons were responsible for these high poverty levels, including large numbers of ethnic minority peoples with low levels of education, villager’s poor cultivation techniques, limited agricultural land and constrained market access (Vietnam Rubber Group, 2017). In a 2019 report, VRG added ‘villagers are backward’ as another reason (Vietnam Rubber Group, 2019). In this report, VRG emphasized that rubber was important for lifting villagers out of poverty and improving their way of life. The rolling out of rubber in the region thus became framed as a development and humanitarian project, as the president of VRG expressed: ‘Economically speaking investment in the region is difficult and costly … [however] we don’t avoid the difficulties; we don’t only care about economic benefit … we consider other objectives including job creation for ethnic minority people in mountainous areas.’ (Vietnam Rubber Group, 2019, p. 5). The notion that rubber was important for poverty alleviation was also strongly reflected in Resolution 254. According to the resolution, allocating villager’s land and labor for large-scale rubber development would help transform poor and ‘backward’ villagers with limited cultivation techniques from peasants into plantation workers. The resolution reads: ‘Gradually shifting peasants … to rubber workers … establishing rubber worker villages is extremely important for … economic development of the province in the future.’ (Son La People Council’s Resolution 254, 2008, p. 2). Through this lens of legitimation, the development of rubber in the region not only aimed to transform villager’s land use practices but also their backward way of life. A vice chairman of the north-western province of Lai Chau province, stated that rubber development ‘could make ethnic minorities in the province rich’ (ibid). Members of the rubber development steering committee communicated this notion well in their meetings with villagers.

Seen as backward, villagers became the subject of rubber’s ‘civilizing’ mission – an important political task that the joint venture project had to carry. VRG claimed: ‘[since joining the project] villagers have become confident and proactive and know how to control their expenditure and investment … Their happiness indicators have shown that they are being civilized … They know how to use modern facilities … from car, motorbike, fridge, gas stove, air-conditioners, telephone, computer, laptop … to hand washing liquid, napkin, soap, cosmetic, modern cloth and footwear, tie … Every day [villagers] eat good and hygiene foods that are better for their health.’ (Vietnam Rubber Group, 2019, p. 6)

High-level state and VRG actors sought to further legitimate large-scale rubber development on environmental grounds. Re-classified as a ‘multi-purpose’ tree, rubber was pitched by the government as vital for ‘regreening’ the barren land which was widespread in the north-western region and therefore directly contributing to environmental protection.⁸ In one of his interviews with media agencies, the VRG president strongly emphasized the environmental benefits of the rubber project: ‘We grow rubber in this region to mitigate soil erosion and to prevent floods in the lowland in rainy season. This region was dominated by barren hills, stiff slopes and rocky landscapes … villagers abandoned their land one-to-two years after cultivation by the time the land was unfertile. They then had to encroach the forest for cultivation … Rubber plantation … is for regreening the forest and for protection of the environmental. Forest clearing will stop when rubber is planted.’ (Vietnam Rubber Group, 2019, p. 8).

The central government went further, justifying the development of rubber in north-western provinces as beneficial for the entire nation due to its environmental benefits. Sharing his thoughts with media reporters, the Deputy Prime Minister argued that the development of rubber would help to ‘stabilize’ the region’s two largest dams (Son La and Lai Chau) which supply most of Vietnam’s electricity VRG extended this narrative by making an explicit link between rubber development in the region and national security, stating that rubber helped ‘stabilize social security and maintain national security’ (Vietnam Rubber Group, 2019). In addition to regulations and legitimation, the use of force was important in enlisting villager’s land and in maintaining rubber plantations when local resistance to the joint venture arrangements grew.

5.3. Force: “Land belongs to the state” and “rubber as the nation’s asset”

Force played a vital role in mobilizing villagers’ land and continues to play such a role in maintaining rubber plantations. During land mobilization, the rubber company and local authorities used the threat of legal sanctions to deal with villagers who did not want to entrust their land for rubber development. In the village meetings, local officials and the company emphasized that rubber development was a government project embracing multiple objectives and that villagers were obligated to join. Framing rubber production in this way equated refusal to agree to the terms of the joint venture with resistance to the government. A Cu Pe villager recalled that local officials visited every household who did not want to contribute their land to the project and told them: ‘The land belongs to the state not to you. If you don’t entrust the land, the government will take it.’ (Key informant interview, 20 December 2019). Thus, villagers had no choice but to agree to the joint venture and allocate their land to the company.

As the rolling out of rubber was a political task, delays in the implementation would mean government officials – particularly lower-level district, commune, and village officials – who were in direct contact with villagers did not fulfill their political duty to central government agencies. Pressure on local officials from those at higher levels mounted. Provincial Steering Committees set ‘land quotas’ – designated areas of land to be mobilized – for district officials and requested them to find ways to meet those quotas in their respective jurisdictions. District officials then passed these quotas onto commune and village officials. The Chairmen of Cu Pe and Mai Quynh villages shared that they were told by commune officials that they would be dismissed if they were unable to find enough land in their villages to help fill the quotas. Given this pressure, commune and village officials often entrusted larger areas of their own land to rubber than other villagers. The chairman of Mai Quynh village shared with me that they had been asked by higher officials to do this in order to ‘set a good example for the villagers to follow’.

Force in the form of the use and threat to use legal sanctions was largely deployed by government authorities when the rubber plantation did not deliver benefits to villagers as they had promised. Approximately six years into the plantation cycle, when the rubber trees had reached maturity and were ready to be tapped, the global rubber market went from boom to bust. As rubber was no longer economically viable, the company – having an upper-hand in the joint venture – decided not to tap rubber trees in most of its plantations, including those in Mai Quynh and Cu Pe. They selectively harvested only large trees with a high yield. Due to the small harvest and low market price, villagers received little to no income after several years of dedicating half their cultivation lands to rubber. As revealed in the survey by Forest Trends (Forest Trends, 2019), of the six villages surveyed, the company harvested rubber in four villages starting in 2017–2018, about two-to-three years later than their original plan, which resulted in significantly less benefit payments than expected. On average, each household received about VND300,000 (US$17) – an amount well below the Vietnamese government’s poverty threshold. In Mai Quynh village, some households received as little as a couple of dozen VND (around US$1); ‘not enough to buy a bim bim [a chip snack] for my kid’, as one villager in the village reflected (Key informant interview, 19 December 2019). Furthermore, as the rubber trees reached their maturity, the plantation workload had reduced and the company only required a few villagers to maintain the plantation. For example, in the six villages surveyed by Forest Trends (2019), by 2019 there were only 62 villagers working for the company − 19% of the total number of villagers that were employed in the first two years of the project. In Cu Pe and Mai Quynh, villagers were experiencing heightened financial stress as income from both their land and labor became heavily constrained.

Given these livelihood pressures, villagers had already begun to resist the rubber project. Many households in Mai Quynh and Cu Pe demanded the company return their land. When the company did not meet their demands, villagers employed ‘weapons of the weak’ (Scott, 1985) to get their land back. Some villagers secretly removed rubber trees from their land and replaced them with fruit trees and alternate crops; others let their cattle roam freely on the land to sabotage the rubber trees. The rubber company successfully replanted the trees in some areas but failed in others. The company asked villagers to protect the trees, but villagers ignored their request. Villagers in these two villages approached LPSD – a local NGO mandated to support local communities displaced from hydroelectric dams. In 2016 LPSD reached out to provincial and national authorities to convey villager’s concerns over the rubber plantation and demanded their land be returned. LPSD organized trips for the villagers to the district and provincial capital to meet with officials to communicate their demands in person. LPSD also sent letters to the Prime Minister’s Office, MARD and VRG, requesting them to address villager’s concerns. However, their requests were met with silence.

Following this stalemate, in August 2018 villagers in Mai Quynh and Cu Pe, supported by LPSD, sent a letter to the company and provincial and district authorities to inform them that if the company did not remove the trees from their land by 31 October 2018 then they themselves would remove the trees. A day before the removal date, authorities sent police to Mai Quynh and Cu Pe to protect the trees. They patrolled and monitored the villages for signs of tree removal. District police officers demanded that key villagers, including the Mai Quynh and Cu Pe chairmen, present themselves at their office on the day out of fear that they would mobilize villagers to take collective action. At the police office, these villagers were questioned concerning their actions against the plantation and their role in inciting other villagers to resist the company. They were threatened with jail if they encouraged villagers to remove the trees. They were eventually released at the end of the day, but the chairman of Mai Quynh was dismissed from his role for siding with the villagers in their dispute with the company. Local authorities also restricted LPSD’s access to the area. All village meetings held by LPSD were closely monitored and villagers were requested not to interact with LPSD. Facing increasing intimidation from local authorities, villagers in Mai Quynh and Cu Pe did not dare to join meetings organized by LPSD anymore.

A key strategy the company adopted to deal with villager’s resistance was to introduce the slogan that ‘rubber trees are the nation’s asset’ (cây cao su là tài sản quốc gia). To deter further acts of sabotage, the company posted many large sign boards throughout the province with this slogan and others that stated: ‘those that harm the tree have to compensate’ (ai gây hại phải bồ thường). The notion that a rubber tree is the nation’s asset conveyed an explicit connotation of heavy legal and financial sanctions for those that bring any harm to the tree. This strategy was able to suppress villager’s resistance to a certain extent. The 2019 Forest Trends survey revealed that 41% of the villagers considered maintaining the plantation because they believed that ‘rubber belongs to the state’ (Forest Trends, 2019).

In addition to the threat to use legal sanctions against villagers, the company also threatened hefty financial punishment for villagers that demanded their land back. Specifically, the company told villagers that their land was locked up in a 50-year contract and they would need to pay the company VND800 million (equivalent to US$40,000 at the time) for each ha of land planted with rubber (Key informant interview, 20 December 2019). This amount was significantly larger than the value of land invested in most cases (usually equivalent to VND150–300 million (US$7,500–15,000). Villagers believed that the company used this extravagant amount to suppress their claims and scare them away. In this case, force combined with artificially inflated market values served as an effective mechanism to stamp out villager’s requests to get their land back.

6. Discussion and conclusion

This paper has examined the development of state-led large-scale rubber plantations in Vietnam’s north-western region. The global rubber boom that commenced in the early 2000s strongly motivated VRG to expand their plantations in the country’s north-western region through contract farming – dubbed as a ‘joint venture’ by VRG. Under the terms of the joint venture, villagers contributed their land and labor (equivalent to a 10% investment share) whereas the rubber company provided seedlings, chemicals and was responsible for assisting with cultivation techniques, management and market access (equivalent to a 90% investment share). Many villagers that entered the joint venture were given false expectations as to the benefits that would be paid to them once the rubber was harvested. Most of them were forced to join. Literature on land grabs emphasizes the process through which common or villager’s land is shifted to private actors for commodity production (Borras et al., 2011). The development of large-scale rubber plantations in Vietnam’s north-western region could be termed a ‘land grab’ as it follows the process through which land (and labor) was taken away from smallholders for the establishment of large-scale rubber plantations in the midst of a global market boom (e.g. Borras et al., 2011; Wolford et al., 2013). Luu et al. (2020) argue that in Vietnam, land-grabbing is state-led and this has given VRG and its subsidiary companies more freedom, leverage, and power. Empirically, my study revealed that a state-led land grab helps exclude rivalry from the private sector or foreign investors in accessing land and labor and allows further suppression of local resistance. In addition, as my study revealed in an authoritarian context like Vietnam where the state dictates land use and management and development agenda and priorities, state-led land grab can have a more devastating impact on local communities than land grabs seen in other places (e.g. Fox & Castella, 2013; Kenney Lazar et al., 2018).

My case study has also highlighted how the state-led land grab in north-western Vietnam occurred through various ‘exclusion’ mechanisms. Using the powers of exclusion framework developed by Hall and Li (2011), the paper has examined how regulations, legitimation and force worked together to separate villagers from their land to enable large-scale rubber plantations. While the market is an important mechanism of exclusion (ibid), this power played a less important role in enrolling villagers than the other mechanisms. The adoption of the powers of exclusion framework as an analytical lens helps reveal the development narratives and technologies used by the government to authorize, legitimate and secure the removal of prime smallholder land for rubber development.

Firstly, the central government issued regulations to create new land for plantations, including classifying rubber as a multipurpose tree which enabled forest conversion and the inclusion of villager’s crop lands for rubber development. The central government’s regulations were translated into concrete activities though provincial human and financial resources, policies and guidelines aimed at mobilizing villager’s land and labor for rubber development. Central government regulations tightened villager’s access to land in a region where land access had already been highly constrained due to the development of hydroelectric dams. The central government was able to make these regulations because they hold the ultimate power over land. The state’s role in deciding how land should be used and for what purpose is a distinctive aspect of the Vietnamese authoritarian state (P.S.M. To & Dressler, 2015).

Secondly, this case has shown that in addition to government regulations, legitimation was key in enrolling villager’s land and labor for the establishment of rubber in north-western provinces. Often ignored in previous studies, legitimation helped justify the formation and implementation of regulations and mobilization of resources required for rubber development. Specifically, high-level state and VRG representatives pitched rubber as an ecological and humanitarian project – important for regreening degraded and barren land, and vital for household income and consequently for lifting remote villagers out of poverty. The benefits of rubber were not just confined to local areas, but were touted as vital for national economic security. These benefits included prevention of floods in the lowlands and protection of hydroelectric dams that supply electricity for the whole country. Seen through this lens, rubber development in the region became instrumental for state building as it helps secure multiple national objectives. However, maintaining the legitimacy of rubber proved difficult for the state when it failed to deliver the benefits as promised by VRG and government proponents and began to face strong local resistance.

Lastly, various forms of force were used to suppress this resistance. They include coercion, surveillance, threat to use violence and intimidation of legal sanctions. Reminding recalcitrant villagers that ‘land belongs to the state’ reinforced the idea that villagers did not hold ultimate rights to their land or power to decide how it could be used. This allowed local authorities and Son La Rubber Company to threaten to ‘take the land back’ if villagers did not comply. Equally, publicizing the slogan that ‘the rubber tree is the nation’s asset’ conveyed a message that hefty legal sanctions and fines would apply to sabotage activities. To enroll villagers in rubber cultivation, commune and district officials were asked by their bosses to act as ‘a good example’ for villagers to follow. By inflating the buy-back price of land beyond the reach of most villagers, VRG embedded aspects of the market in its use of force. Consequently, many felt obliged to give away large tracts of their land for rubber. The deployment of police, detention and dismissal of a village chairman for siding with the villagers in their dispute with the company is a further example of the use of force by other tiers of government to enroll villagers, protect and maintain the rubber company’s interests. As this case demonstrates, the government’s use of various forms of force is an important aspect of the state-led land grab in Vietnam.

Theoretically, this paper has shown that the use of regulations, legitimation and force were interwoven and the boundary between these state powers is not always clear, as Hall and Li (2011) perceived. Regulations that enabled rubber development were formulated based on narratives of legitimacy that placed an emphasis on development priorities such as ‘poverty alleviation’ and large-scale production linked to high productivity. Terms such as ‘watershed protection’, ‘forest cover increase’ and ‘national energy security’ were used to further justify the rubber project on environmental grounds, collapsing the distinction between legitimation and regulation. Legitimation was framed around meeting important intersecting local and national interests to enhance compliance. Force was integral and deployed throughout the process to ensure regulatory compliance and buy-in from lower government officials, local leaders and villagers.

When the expected benefits of rubber failed to materialize for villagers in Son La, local resistance grew and a key narrative of legitimacy was threatened, the use of force became more coercive and punitive in nature. Government officials and rubber company representatives told villagers that non-compliance would result in their land being taken away. Local security forces were deployed to Cu Pe and Mai Quynh villages to monitor villagers, stamp out acts of sabotage and resistance and village officials were detained and dismissed for supporting their communities. These acts of force demonstrate the ultimate power held by the Vietnamese state over its citizens and VRG in its ‘joint venture’ arrangements with villagers. In summary, the boundary among regulations, legitimation and force is blur, with one mechanism being an integral part of one another. Further study applying the powers of exclusion framework should take this into account.

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the Australian Research Council (DP 180101495: Rupture: Nature-Society Transformations in Mainland Southeast Asia). Forest Trends provided some support during the course of the paper writing. I would like to thank the valuable comments from the editor and two anonymous reviewers. This article is part of the special issue Agrarian Change in the Mekong Region: Pathways towards Sustainable Land Systems, supported by the Mekong Region Land Governance Project (MRLG). Thanks Sophie Dowling for editorial help.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Thai is the third largest ethnic minority group in Vietnam. As of 2019, Vietnam had approximately 1.82 million Thai people according to Vietnam’s Living Standards and Housing Survey.

2. The construction of Son La hydroelectric dam was completed in 2012. It is the largest hydroelectric dam in Southeast Asia.

3. Rubber products include gloves, tires, and rubber twine and threads among others.

4. Only a few private companies were able to participate in rubber production as their land access was constrained.

5. Of these land areas, 295,000 ha is in Vietnam; the remaining 115,000 ha are in Cambodia and Laos (Vietnam Rubber Group, 2019). VRG also manages 12 timber processing and another 12 in industrial zones and high-tech agricultural production. VRG has investments in another 27 companies that are not under VRG’s direct management.

6. The remaining 30% was the forestland managed by commune and district authorities and by local communities.

7. Resolution 254 reveals that the total investment required for rubber development in the province was US$258.4 million, of which US$244.1 million would be provided by VRG.

8. According to Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (2019), forest cover in the northwest in 2019 was 41.65%, the lowest coverage among the mountainous regions (forest coverage in the northeast was 56.02%; central-north was 57.7%, and the central highlands was 46%). See: https://luatvietnam.vn/nong-nghiep/quyet-dinh-911-qd-bnn-tcln-2019-cong-bo-hien-trang-rung-toan-quoc-171445-d1.html