THRESHOLD INFRASTRUCTURE - Pear River Delta / Hong Kong

THRESHOLD INFRASTRUCTURE Pelin Tan THRESHOLD INFRASTRUCTURE Pelin Tan hreshold Infrastructure, 2017 by Pelin Tan Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Photography: Pelin Tan & Yangyi Quyang Short ilm: www.vimeo.com/200688904 Map & image references: www.bit.ly/2jQI4cH Design: Tengo Kawana Typeset in Garamond Printed on 250gsm & 100gsm in Hong Kong hank you MAP Oice, Yangyi Ouyang, Lin Guanhao Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone Design Trust Seed Grant, 2016 DELTA / INFRASTRUCTURE / LABOR 2 3 DELTA / INFRASTRUCTURE / LABOR Most studies and research in and around the Pearl River Delta (PRD) are often based on a larger narrative of the relationship between rapid urbanization of the cities around the delta, its relation to the tax free zone Hong Kong and the dispossession of land or privatization as an outcome of the post-industrialization. he dichotomy between rural and urban areas and the dynamics between them is a popular topic in research in the areas of the PRD. Moreover, large infrastructure projects such as bridges or using islands as infrastructure itself is a phenomenon in the PRD sea. Politically and legally, the deined sea and water area of the PRD is an invisible borderline. However, it is also a space where activities of thresholds are happening. For researchers MAP Oice, the Pearl River Delta is a luid space of many constituent parts like bridges and artiicial islands. Delta is: “As an experimental territory, the delta is a mutant corpse consisting of wild juxtapositions, with localised and unique dead parts below the next lourishing plot” (p.92). On the other hand there are not many studies from the sea or sea culture perspectives on the PRD. With the inluences of previous works/research of designers and artists, my aim is to understand how the sea culture exists and how it inluenced by the infrastructural projects - if it exists – and in what ways. he liquid land is as much in power and inluence as the concrete land. Fishing villages and their enclaved everyday life and sea activities or islands, from an infrastructural perspective, create a cosmology of zones. he delta ontology of the PRD sea might contain autonomous zones. Researchers Morito & Jensen argue that the meaning and the understanding of “delta” has a major diference from a Western perspective that afects the research angle: “Southeast Asia conceived deltas along the major rivers as extensions of the sea into land. hey were crucially important HK Lab, MAP Book Publisher, 2002 Delta Ontologies: Infrastructural Transformations in Southeast Asia, https://independent. academia.edu/ CasperBruunJensen, 2016 spaces for the overseas trade upon which these polities depended. Zooming in on these incongruent delta histories allows us to also elicit the distinct and still open-ended dynamics of their interacting ontologies” (Morito & Jensen p.3-4). Whereas from a Western research point, “deltas have been as forces that extend the terrestrial world into the sea.” By deining from an ontological base Morito & Jensen mean “not only attention to how people understand and live with deltas but also to their infrastructural and cosmological dimensions” (Morito & Jensen p.5). 9 he PRD presents such an ontology where infrastructures and the low create a lux of movements of people, plants, animals and capital. “he Zhujiang (also known as the Pearl) River is the fourth longest river in China, formed by the conluence of the Dongjiang, Beijing and Xijiang rivers lowing down from Guangdong and Guangxi provinces.” “he Zhujiang River Delta is located at the entrance of the South China Sea, where it covers 40,000 square km.” “he Pearl River Delta is the most lood-prone place on earth, facing multiple catastrophe risks of storm surge, typhoons and river looding.” https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Pearl_River_ (China) DELTA / INFRASTRUCTURE / LABOR 12 DELTA / INFRASTRUCTURE / LABOR Infrastructure is basically a term for designing the modern urban space, and is also the production of complete spatial objects. For centuries, it has basic roles such as colonization; that is introducing projects of infrastructure in order to change and colonize the culture or society in any scale. It also functions as a justiication of neoliberal urban-rural policies in expanding, expropriating and rescaling property and lands. It is the object between form and law as Easterling deines: “Infrastructure is considered to be a hidden substrate— the binding medium or current between objects of positive consequence, shape, and law” (Easterling, p.17). 13 Extrastatecraft, Verso, 2014 Recently, the discourses of infrastructure have many discussions that reveal the role of infrastructure in more complex ways. Incomplete and failures of infrastructure are often related with the nature of the infrastructural functions that prolong the process of the infrastructure projects. he process becomes more important (than the complete infrastructure itself ) where actors such as the state, local governments, developers and citizens debate or negotiate, which leads to more proit-making and surplus. In short, instead of the complete object or presentation itself; the incomplete, the continuous failure or the process of infrastructure becomes the vital part. It is often argued that in many cases (for example in Indian cities) the failure of infrastructure or interruption of infrastructural function brings co-existences of alternative ways of infrastructure in the network of such cities. Infrastructure as an assemblage is another current discourse of infrastructure. As Graham’s describes: “...urban infrastructures as complex assemblages that bring all manner of human, non-human, and natural agents into a multitude of continuous liaisons across geographic space” (Graham, p.11). Disrupted Cities: When Infrastructure Fails, Routledge, 2010 In this context the PRD could be considered a hub of such assemblages of infrastructures. he east and the westbanks of PRD, including the islands, hosts many hubs that the delta itself could be considered as an infrastructural space, a machine of a total network of an infrastructure itself. he approach of assemblage theory introduces generally a nonhuman materialist thought as well a frame of potentialities of production of spatial practice: in such case assemblages (in the case of PRD) can be understood as interrelated functions, law, services and networks of infrastructure. For Easterling, infrastructural space: “... trades on ephemeral desires and irrational aspirations. Organizations of every kind—from celebrity golf suburbs to retail chains to zones—attempt to proit, govern, or otherwise maintain power with instrumental forms of meaninglessness” (Easterling, p.486). Since the launch of the Open Door Policy (1979) of Mainland China in the PRD region, four Special Economic Zones (SEZs) were located in the region (1984). he cities Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Hong Kong and Macao are still magnetic zones that are in a reciprocal relationship in terms of economical dependency from export-oriented manufacturing to the current housing/ infrastructural investments. “In 2008, China announced plans to mesh Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Zhaoqing, Foshan, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Zhongshan and Zhuhai into a single megacity. A series of massive infrastructure projects are underway to merge transport, energy, water and telecoms networks across the nine cities. A 30-mile-long bridge and tunnel is under construction to join the Pearl River Delta metropolis of Zhuhai to the special administrative regions of Macau and Hong Kong” (Guardian, 2016). Large-scale infrastructural projects on the delta provides an intense function of urban corridors between the cities for labor investments and tourism low. Moreover, its administration means that the functions and the efects of the infrastructural space in-between SEZs will create its own law and economy. he Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge and the border control points serve itself as infrastructural assemblages that 15 www.theguardian. com/cities/2016/ may/10/china-pearlriver-delta-then-andnow-photographs work all in collaboration. he transportation corridors and the artiicial usages of islands forecasted in 2002 by MAP Oice’s research on the PRD: “...original heavy dependence on Hong Kong transportation facilities to handle the transit of goods produced in the delta, is now challenged by the increasing number of container terminals in Shenzen and other Pearl River towns. As ports get closer to the production lines, more highways and roads are using Guangzhou’s new infrastructure to connect to previously distant Mainland provinces…” (MAP Oice, p.74). Both the administration of mainland China and the special zones create a special condition of extrastatecraft. In Easterling’s deinition: “As a site of multiple, overlapping, or nested forms of sovereignty, where domestic and transnational jurisdictions collide, infrastructure space becomes a medium of what might be called extrastatecraft” (Easterling, p.25). I think, considering the sea of the PRD region; this liquid territory redeines itself as a “border infrastructure” itself; moreover, an infrastructure for infrastructure. he construction and future plans of these corridors on the sea afects the built environment of the seashores with new theme parks, residential areas and artiicial local tourism attractions in where local farming and ishing practices are squeezed as thresholds of delta. he assemblages of the infrastructures leaves the local delta practices aside as thresholds that still serves as other infrastructures itself. 19 HK LAB, MAP Book Publisher, 2002 Invest HK, Executive Report, Government of the Hong Kong, 2014 DELTA / INFRASTRUCTURE / LABOR 22 23 DELTA / INFRASTRUCTURE / LABOR he fragmented land and sea of delta host several types of labor conditions. he common known factory labor is the migrant labor from mainland China that lowed with the establishment of manufacture and tech-production centers in the opening of the PRD region. However, the 2008 global economic crisis afected tax and regulation policies in China, and caused an increase in expense for the private sector by the state sector: “he bulk of the Chinese stimulus program funds went into the state sector, that is, into the state banks and the state enterprises. he state also strengthened environmental regulations and tightened the tax loopholes on private enterprises in the export sector. For example, many Hong Kong companies said they had to close down their factories in the Pearl River Delta because of the worsening business environment due to new regulations and taxation” (So & Chu, p.100). Many factories diminished and factories such as Foxconn even opened headquarters inland in Chongqing. hus, in recent years, there is a transformation of economic surplus from manufacturing to construction and real estate speculation that leads to delta infrastructure and service economies. Farming and ishing labor still exist and are squeezed along the coast in-between investments. he ishing villages in the west part of PRD seashore are hidden in many fragmented lands. Some of those villages are not possible to reach via roads but only by sea. For example, to reach to the oldest lasting village Xinzhou (新洲) is much easier by boat. he inhabitants of the villages are no longer very active in ishing as the contamination of the PRD sea increased in the last ten years. he level of poverty is high. here are many other villages, which are active like the Fengmasan Village (南沙冯马三村) in Nansha (南沙). he housing settlement of the village is around a small river that opens to the PRD. he hinterland of the village is he Global Rise of China, Polity Press, 2016 surrounded with agricultural land. he women in the village produce handmade ishing nets, go ishing, catch seafood to sell to other ishermongers, and they also clean and dry ish and seafood to sell in the village markets. Villages such as 莲花山附近村落 near Lianhua Mountain (Lotus Mountain, Panyu) and a fishermen’s inhabitance near Yuzhu Wharf (渔民聚居地, Huangpu) are active in ishing and selling seafood. hose villages have kept the old village structure plan, however they look more developed, with upgraded housing and public space. Fishermen’s inhabitance along the old harbor near Yuzhu Wharf (渔民聚居地, Huangpu) are now under pressure due to new luxury housing projects by developers. Older generation women in the village of 莲花山附近村落 village near Lianhua Mountain were once part of a ishing cooperative for many years. However this cooperative has been disbanded and they now have expended their pension money. Women of diferent ages are engaged in the whole ishing process: cleaning; separating; dying or selling freshly in the PRD region. In the village, a ishing couple goes out at 2 AM to ish near Hong Kong’s outlying islands and arrives back at 11 AM to sell their daily catch to ishmongers. Most of the ishing families have children who now work in Guangzhou city as white-collar workers and can hardly pay their city rent. he relationships between female labor, community economies, ecology and the ethics of locality are all a basic framework for the ishing villages and the activity of people in the PRD. Several diferent economical structures and dissemination exist in complex ways, from agriculture to sea economy to urban capital. In this context, how can diverse local economical structures and traditional labor exist in the future of the PRD region? From the perspective of J. K. Gibson-Graham, diverse economies and surplus are able to organise outside of capitalist-centered places: “If we can recognize a diverse economy, we can begin to imagine and create 29 diverse organizations and practices as powerful constituents of an enlivened noncapitalist politics of place” (J. K. GibsonGraham, p.13). For the economist geographers: “‘diverse economy’ is one of our strategic moves against the subordination of local subjects to the discourse of (capitalist economic) globalization.” Starting from female labor intertwined with the local tradition of ishing net making and preserving varieties of seafood in the PRD region, leads us to think of possible structures of diverse economies in relation to the PRD ecology, agricultural farming plots in the hinterlands of the villages, the ish farms in the delta geography, the community economies and the terrestrial transformation of the delta by wild investors. he End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) - A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, University of Minnesota Press, 2006 Take Back the Economy - an ethical Guide for Transforming our communities, University of Minnesota Press, 2013 2017