Blockchain Chicken Farm

Blockchain Chicken Farm Plot Summary

Introduction

The journey into China's rural transformation begins not in gleaming skyscrapers or tech hubs, but in small villages where ancient traditions meet disruptive innovation. Picture a rice farmer checking crop prices on a smartphone while standing in fields his family has cultivated for generations. Or imagine a young woman livestreaming from her rural home to sell handcrafted goods to urban dwellers thousands of miles away. These scenes represent the complex intersections of technology, tradition, and economic change reshaping the Chinese countryside today. This book examines how digital technologies are transforming rural China in ways that challenge conventional narratives about development and modernization. Moving beyond simplistic urban-rural divides, it explores how e-commerce platforms have created new economic opportunities for farmers, how AI and blockchain are reshaping agriculture, and how surveillance technologies operate differently in rural contexts. By examining these technological interventions in the countryside, we gain crucial insights into China's unique development path and the global implications of rural digitalization. Whether you're interested in China's rise as a technological power, rural development strategies, or the complex interplay between tradition and innovation, this exploration of China's digital ruralities provides a window into one of the most significant transformations happening in our interconnected world today.

Chapter 1: Rural Foundations: Tradition, Memory and China's Development Path

The Chinese countryside has always been more than just a geographic space—it has been the foundation of Chinese civilization for over five thousand years. Rural life, with its rhythms of planting and harvesting, ancestral traditions, and communal structures, has profoundly shaped Chinese identity in ways that continue to influence modern development trajectories. Unlike Western narratives that often position rural areas as backward or peripheral, Chinese cultural and political traditions place the countryside at the center of national identity and strength. The sociologist Fei Xiaotong's influential 1947 work "From the Soil" articulated how deeply Chinese society is rooted in agricultural foundations. Fei described rural Chinese culture as marked by a different sense of time and cosmology—one where the universe is already perfect as it is, and humans' duty is to maintain harmony rather than constantly innovate or disrupt. This worldview stands in sharp contrast to urban cultures centered on overcoming challenges and changing the status quo. As one farmer told the author during field research: "In the fields, in the long dark of winters, there is no future, because every day depends on tending to the present moment." The Mao era brought dramatic changes to rural China through land reform and collectivization. The Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) represented a catastrophic attempt to rapidly transform rural production, resulting in a devastating famine that killed millions. Later, during the 1980s reform period, the household responsibility system returned land management to families while maintaining collective ownership. These reforms unleashed rural entrepreneurship through Town and Village Enterprises (TVEs), which played a crucial role in China's economic miracle. By 1995, these rural enterprises accounted for approximately one-quarter of China's GDP and more than one-third of its export earnings. The rural-urban relationship in China has been characterized by both interdependence and exploitation. While urban areas have benefited from rural resources and labor, the countryside has often borne the costs of national development. The hukou household registration system has institutionalized this divide by restricting rural residents' access to urban benefits. Nevertheless, over 300 million rural migrants have moved to cities in search of work over the past three decades, powering China's industrial growth while maintaining ties to their rural homes. This massive migration has left many villages "hollowed out," populated primarily by the elderly and children. Today, China's countryside faces significant challenges: environmental degradation, income inequality, and an aging population. Yet it also presents opportunities for reimagining development. President Xi Jinping's Rural Revitalization strategy, launched in 2017, aims to transform the countryside through technological innovation, ecological restoration, and cultural preservation. This strategy reflects recognition that China's future depends on harmonizing rural and urban development rather than sacrificing one for the other. The transformation of rural China illustrates how traditions and collective memory shape development paths in ways that defy universal models. As China navigates its rural future, it draws on both ancient wisdom about human relationships with the land and cutting-edge digital technologies that promise to overcome longstanding rural-urban divides. Understanding these rural foundations is essential for comprehending China's unique development trajectory and its emerging vision of modernity.

Chapter 2: From Fields to Platforms: E-commerce Revolution in Villages

The explosion of e-commerce in rural China represents one of the most significant transformations in the global countryside. Beginning around 2013, tech giants like Alibaba and JD.com launched ambitious rural strategies that have fundamentally altered village economies and social structures. What makes this revolution remarkable is not just its scale—reaching hundreds of millions of rural residents—but how it has created bidirectional flows that both bring urban products to villages and carry village products to urban consumers. Taobao Villages exemplify this transformation. These are rural communities where at least 10% of households engage in e-commerce, often specializing in particular products. In Dinglou village, Shandong Province, over 90% of residents help produce costumes for stage and film that are sold online. The village was designated by Alibaba as China's first Taobao Village in 2012, and by 2018, their number had grown to over 3,200 across 24 provinces. As one village secretary named Ren Qingsheng recounted, his e-commerce journey began when he and his wife borrowed 1,400 yuan (about $200) to buy their first computer, despite having limited education. "At the time, we didn't know anything about online banking," he explained. "Every day I would go all the way to the bank and check our account. And when the money did come, my wife and I immediately went out and bought a whole chicken to slaughter in celebration." The digital infrastructure supporting this revolution extends beyond websites to encompass mobile payment systems, logistics networks, and digital literacy programs. Alibaba's Rural Taobao initiative established service centers in village convenience stores where local "digital ambassadors" help residents shop online and access services. Mobile payment platforms like Alipay have become essential rural financial infrastructure, enabling transactions in places where traditional banking has been inconvenient. These systems solve a critical problem of trust between urban buyers and rural sellers through mechanisms like escrow services that hold payment until buyers confirm receipt of goods. Rural e-commerce has significantly altered traditional power dynamics. It has created opportunities for young people to return to their hometowns rather than migrating to cities, addressing the "hollowed-out village" phenomenon. Women have become important e-commerce entrepreneurs, challenging traditional gender roles. Local officials have shifted from skepticism to enthusiastic support as they've witnessed economic benefits. As one county official remarked after initially misunderstanding a farmer's e-commerce operation: "It's a kind of mass hoax. It's a psychological sale first, then an economical sale." Despite its benefits, the e-commerce revolution has brought challenges. Small rural businesses face increasing pressure from platforms demanding advertising fees and preferential positioning. Environmental impacts include increased packaging waste and land use changes as farmers shift from subsistence crops to commercial products. Digital divides persist, with the elderly and less educated often unable to participate fully in the online economy. As one disgruntled shoe manufacturer in Dinglou complained, "Alibaba sucks us dry... As sellers, all our money is kept in Alipay... But we have to keep making worse-quality stuff. How are we supposed to keep prices low and also compete with others?" The rural e-commerce revolution in China has global implications. Alibaba announced plans in 2018 to export the Taobao Village model internationally through its Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) initiative, with outposts established in Malaysia, Rwanda, and South Africa. Meanwhile, platforms like AliExpress and Wish.com connect rural Chinese manufacturers directly to global consumers. What began in Chinese villages has become a model for reimagining rural development worldwide, challenging assumptions about the inevitability of rural decline in the digital age.

Chapter 3: Engineered Agriculture: AI, Blockchain and Rural Livelihoods

The Chinese countryside has become a laboratory for advanced agricultural technologies that promise to revolutionize farming. Far from the traditional image of peasants with hand tools, rural China is increasingly populated by AI-powered drones scanning rice paddies, blockchain-tracked chickens roaming hillsides, and sophisticated sensor networks monitoring soil conditions. This technological transformation represents a deliberate strategy to address China's food security challenges while creating new rural livelihoods. Alibaba's ET Agricultural Brain exemplifies this engineered approach to agriculture. In partnership with the Sichuan-based Tequ Group, Alibaba deployed artificial intelligence to help raise pigs, with plans for ten million pigs by 2020. In these industrial operations, pigs wear unique identification markers similar to QR codes, allowing AI models to monitor them in real-time using video, temperature, and sound sensors. The system detects signs of disease, optimizes feeding schedules, and predicts the best times for slaughter. As one Alibaba engineer explained, "ET Agricultural Brain is like a Swiss Army knife of models—these models are fed training data from specific clients, big industrial farms that raise pigs and grow melons, or even agricultural drone companies." Blockchain technology has similarly been deployed to address food safety concerns that have plagued China for years. In Sanqiao village, Guizhou Province, the "GoGoChicken" project equips free-range chickens with tamper-proof ankle bracelets that track characteristics such as steps taken and location. These blockchain chickens sell for up to 300 yuan ($40) on e-commerce platforms like JD.com, with buyers scanning QR codes to access data about the chicken's life. "Before blockchain, raising free-range chickens was a yearly uphill battle," explained Farmer Jiang, who manages the operation. "Buyers had a difficult time trusting me, and trusting that the chickens were indeed free-range, worth the higher asking price." Agricultural drones represent another frontier of technological adoption. Companies like XAG have trained thousands of rural youth as licensed drone operators who provide services to farmers. These drones map fields and perform precision pesticide spraying, reducing chemical use while increasing efficiency. Sun Wei, a 25-year-old drone operator from Anhui Province, exemplifies this new rural professional class. Despite having only a vocational high school education, he now runs his own farm service company using drones, earning more than his parents ever did. "Most of the kids I grew up with, they either never went to college or their parents struck it rich... But I just knew I couldn't win in the city, not against kids whose parents do have money," he explained. While these technologies promise to modernize agriculture, they also raise profound questions about rural livelihoods and power dynamics. Industrial-scale operations using AI monitoring systems require significant capital investment, potentially excluding smallholder farmers who have been the backbone of Chinese agriculture for millennia. The optimization of porcine life through AI and genetic control parallels broader attempts to engineer and control nature itself, with unforeseen consequences already evident in the emergence of diseases like African Swine Fever, which devastated China's pig population in 2018-2019. The vision of engineered agriculture reflects China's attempt to balance competing priorities: food security, environmental sustainability, rural livelihoods, and technological advancement. As these systems proliferate across the countryside, they are not merely technical solutions but socio-political interventions that reshape relationships between farmers, consumers, and the land. The question remains whether these technologies will serve as tools of empowerment for rural communities or further concentrate power in the hands of urban technology companies and industrial agricultural conglomerates.

Chapter 4: The Metronormative Trap: Urban Biases and Rural Realities

The concept of "metronormativity"—a term combining "metropolitan" and "normative"—exposes one of the most persistent biases shaping our understanding of rural life in China and globally. This perspective assumes that rural culture and rural people are inherently backward, conservative, and intolerant, while urban spaces represent progress, sophistication, and freedom. Such assumptions have profoundly influenced development policies, technological interventions, and cultural narratives about the countryside, often with detrimental effects. In Chinese development discourse, metronormativity has manifested as a relentless focus on urbanization as the path to modernity. Since the reform era began in the late 1970s, cities have been positioned as engines of growth while rural areas have been treated primarily as sources of raw materials and labor. The hukou household registration system institutionalized this divide by restricting rural residents' access to urban services and opportunities. One migrant worker described the psychological impact: "We felt deeply unwelcome in the cities we were working in... a deep sense of alienation, lacking access to the traditional markers of adulthood such as being able to afford a house or car." Technology deployment in rural areas often reflects urban biases about rural needs and capabilities. Urban engineers and entrepreneurs frequently design digital solutions without adequately understanding rural contexts. As one villager in Jiangxi Province noted: "They bring us these complicated systems and expect us to be grateful, but they don't consider our actual problems or ask what we need." This approach treats rural users as passive recipients of urban innovation rather than co-creators with valuable knowledge and agency. Even well-intentioned digital inclusion initiatives sometimes reinforce the narrative that rural people need "saving" through technology. Rural reality is far more complex than metronormative assumptions suggest. Rural communities have developed sophisticated socio-ecological knowledge systems over generations, creating sustainable agricultural practices long before sustainability became an urban concern. The anthropologist Chris Tan's study of Kuaishou, a video-sharing platform popular in rural China, revealed vibrant cultural production and economic innovation happening outside urban centers. Young rural livestreamers have built successful businesses by connecting directly with audiences, bypassing traditional urban gatekeepers. As one rural content creator remarked: "City people think we're all uneducated farmers, but we're creating our own economy, our own culture." Challenging metronormativity requires recognizing rural areas not as problems to be solved but as spaces of possibility with their own distinctive value systems and development trajectories. China's Rural Revitalization strategy represents a partial acknowledgment of this reality, moving beyond the single-minded focus on urbanization that characterized earlier development policies. However, truly overcoming metronormativity means questioning the underlying assumption that rural-to-urban transformation is the natural or desirable path for all societies. The persistence of metronormativity has global implications as Chinese technology companies expand internationally, bringing their assumptions about development to other rural regions. As one policy advisor noted: "We risk exporting not just technology but a particular vision of modernity that may not fit other rural contexts." By recognizing and challenging metronormativity, both Chinese and international development efforts can better respect rural knowledge, agency, and aspirations, creating more equitable and sustainable paths to the future.

Chapter 5: Digital Authenticity: Food Safety, Trust, and Technological Mediation

The crisis of food safety in China has become a powerful driver of technological innovation in rural areas. Following a series of scandals—from melamine-contaminated infant formula in 2008 to "gutter oil" recycled from restaurant waste—trust in the food system has been severely damaged. This breakdown in trust has created space for new technologies that promise to restore confidence by making food production more transparent, traceable, and authentic. However, these technologies also raise profound questions about how authenticity is constructed and mediated in the digital age. Blockchain technology has emerged as a prominent solution to food safety concerns. In Guizhou Province, the "GoGoChicken" project uses blockchain to create an immutable record of each chicken's life cycle. As Farmer Jiang explained: "Buyers had a difficult time trusting me, and trusting that the chickens were indeed free-range, worth the higher asking price." Each chicken wears an ankle bracelet with a QR code that consumers can scan to view details about the chicken's diet, exercise, and living conditions. Similar systems have been implemented for other products like organic rice, vegetables, and tea. The Food Safety Cloud (食品安全云), a government initiative, aims to prevent record falsification by creating distributed, tamper-proof records of food inspection. Mobile payment and e-commerce platforms have created new channels for direct producer-consumer relationships. Apps like Yimishiji connect urban consumers with small-scale organic farmers, allowing city dwellers to purchase vegetables grown without chemicals. Founder Matilda Ho described how these platforms address the fundamental problem of scale in food safety: "When supply chains were shorter, being able to meet your farmer created trust. With supply chains now long and complex, the chance you might meet the Australian farmer who grew the kiwi you eat is low." Digital platforms attempt to recreate this trust through virtual connections, ratings systems, and transparent information about production methods. Surveillance technologies increasingly monitor food production to ensure compliance with safety standards. Cameras in greenhouses and on farms collect data that is analyzed by artificial intelligence systems to detect unsafe practices. In one pilot project by Ant Financial, cameras were installed on chicken farms to monitor assets in real-time, enabling farmers to receive loans based on their visible livestock. As Zheng Jia from Ant Financial explained: "Farmers need access to loans, but they typically have types of collateral that are different from city people. A farmer's assets might be pigs or chickens." This surveillance infrastructure promises safety and financial inclusion simultaneously, though questions remain about who controls the data and how it might be used. The technological mediation of food authenticity reflects broader changes in how trust is constructed in Chinese society. Traditionally, food safety relied on personal relationships and local knowledge—consumers trusted food because they knew the people who produced it. In a rapidly urbanizing society with complex supply chains, technology now attempts to replace these personal connections with digital verification. However, this shift raises important questions: Does scanning a QR code on a chicken truly create trust, or does it simply replace one form of opacity with another? Who verifies the verifiers in these technological systems? As tech companies increasingly position themselves as guarantors of food safety, they gain significant power over both producers and consumers. Companies like Alibaba have created high-end supermarkets like Hema that promise safe, high-quality food—at premium prices. This commercialization of food safety risks creating a two-tier system where only affluent consumers can afford to eat without fear. Meanwhile, the underlying structural issues that created food safety problems—including pressure on farmers to cut costs, fragmented regulation, and environmental degradation—remain inadequately addressed by technological solutions alone.

Chapter 6: Surveillance Peripheries: Control Systems in Rural Communities

Surveillance technologies operate differently in rural China compared to the urban centers that dominate Western media coverage. While cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai feature sophisticated networks of facial recognition cameras and predictive policing systems, rural surveillance is characterized by a more hybrid approach that combines high-tech tools with traditional social control mechanisms. This distinctive rural surveillance landscape reveals important insights about the evolving relationship between technology, governance, and community in China's countryside. The Real Population Platform (实有人口平台) exemplifies how surveillance systems adapt to rural conditions. In urban villages near Guiyang city, this platform aims to register and track migrants who comprise approximately 80% of the local population. While Western reports might imagine a fully automated system using AI and facial recognition, the reality is more labor-intensive. As police officer Xiaoli explained: "Every police station has numerous police assistants that live in the urban village. They are our eyes and ears. They are embedded in the community and they're the ones who ground-truth the existence of every single house." Registration through WeChat mini-programs is voluntary, with police assistants helping illiterate landlords fill out paper booklets that are later entered into the system manually. Traditional community-based surveillance continues to play a significant role in rural areas. The local neighborhood association—volunteers from the neighborhood, often elderly residents—serves as eyes and ears for police officers. This system of mutual monitoring has deep historical roots in Chinese village life, where close-knit communities naturally observed one another's activities. Technology extends rather than replaces these social networks. As one village party secretary noted: "The cameras help us see what happens on the main roads, but we still rely on people telling us when something strange is happening in someone's home." Data collection in rural areas faces unique challenges that reveal the limits of technological surveillance. Xiaoli described the difficulties of creating accurate databases: "You can use your ID number and one address for work papers, while using a different address for your electricity bill. Especially for migrant workers, it's hard for anyone to tell where you actually live." The informal nature of rural housing further complicates matters—many buildings lack formal addresses, and multiple workers might share the same bed, working different shifts. These realities create gaps and inconsistencies in surveillance data that would not exist in more regulated urban environments. Rural residents have developed various strategies for navigating surveillance systems. Some embrace registration on platforms like the Real Population Platform, seeing it as a way to gain legitimacy and access services. Others maintain strategic ambiguity about their whereabouts, leveraging the porousness of rural surveillance networks. As one migrant worker explained: "In the city, cameras are everywhere. Here, there are still places to hide." This does not mean rural residents entirely escape state monitoring, but rather that the nature of surveillance differs, creating different possibilities for negotiation and resistance. The expansion of surveillance technologies into rural areas reflects broader government concerns about maintaining stability and control across the entire national territory. Rural areas have historically been sites of unrest and resistance, from peasant rebellions in imperial times to land protests in the reform era. Modern surveillance systems aim to extend state visibility into these potential spaces of challenge. However, as Xiaoli candidly admitted: "No one can predict the future. If someone wants to commit a crime, they will commit it. But with this platform, we will try to collect the best data sources." The distinctive character of rural surveillance challenges simplistic narratives about China as a uniform surveillance state. Instead, it reveals a more complex landscape where high-tech systems interact with traditional social structures, creating uneven patterns of visibility and control. Understanding these rural surveillance peripheries provides crucial insights into how power operates beyond the urban centers that dominate both Western and Chinese imaginaries.

Chapter 7: Global Entanglements: China's Rural Production and World Markets

The transformation of China's countryside cannot be understood in isolation from global economic networks. Rural China is deeply entangled with international markets, supply chains, and consumption patterns in ways that shape both local communities and global economic flows. These entanglements reveal how seemingly remote villages are in fact critical nodes in the global economy, producing everything from electronics components to the food on our tables. E-commerce has created direct connections between Chinese rural producers and global consumers. Through platforms like AliExpress, rural manufacturers sell products directly to international markets without urban intermediaries. In Dinglou village, costume makers who once sold only to local photography studios now ship their products to Vietnam, Korea, and beyond. As village secretary Ren Qingsheng proudly noted, his once-humble family workshop earned over $1.16 million in 2017, with a growing proportion coming from international sales. These rural e-commerce entrepreneurs are reshaping global trade patterns, bypassing traditional export channels and creating "microMultinational" enterprises operated from village homes. Agricultural production in rural China increasingly responds to global market demands and food trends. The boom in pork consumption across Asia has transformed rural landscapes, with industrial-scale pig farms replacing traditional smallholder agriculture. In 2013, the Henan Province-based WH Group acquired American pork producer Smithfield, creating the world's largest pork producer with operations spanning China and the United States. This global integration of meat production has environmental consequences that transcend national boundaries. As one agricultural expert observed: "The soybeans grown on deforested land in Brazil are shipped to China as pig feed, then the pork is consumed in China or exported globally—creating a cycle of environmental impact that no single country can address alone." Mining and manufacturing in rural areas support global technology supply chains. Rare earth elements essential for smartphones, electric vehicles, and renewable energy technologies are predominantly mined in rural regions like Inner Mongolia. As one researcher in Baotou noted: "The digital devices used by consumers worldwide depend on these rural extraction sites, though few people make the connection between their smartphones and these remote landscapes." Similarly, rural factories produce components for electronics assembled in urban centers, creating a rural-urban division of labor within global production networks. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the vulnerability of these supply chains, as disruptions in rural Chinese manufacturing affected technology companies worldwide. Cultural flows between rural China and global audiences have accelerated through digital platforms. Rural livestreamers on platforms like Kuaishou have found unexpected international audiences, while Chinese rural products increasingly appear in global lifestyle trends. These connections challenge stereotypical views of rural China as isolated or traditional. As one content creator remarked: "People from America and Europe watch my videos about village life. They think it's exotic, but for me it's just my everyday reality." These cultural exchanges create new forms of soft power and potential economic opportunities, though questions remain about who benefits from the commodification of rural culture. Climate change and environmental pressures create another dimension of global entanglement. Rural China faces severe environmental challenges from soil degradation to water pollution, many stemming from production for global markets. At the same time, Chinese rural innovations in renewable energy and sustainable agriculture offer potential solutions to global environmental problems. Solar farms in formerly impoverished rural areas now supply clean energy to urban centers, while ecological farming initiatives like Rice Harmony Cooperative in Guangdong develop sustainable agricultural methods with global relevance. These global entanglements highlight how rural China's transformation is simultaneously local and global, shaped by international forces while also influencing global economic, environmental, and cultural patterns. As one policy researcher observed: "We need to move beyond thinking of rural China as either victim or villain in globalization, and instead recognize the complex interdependencies that bind rural communities to global systems." Understanding these connections is essential for addressing shared challenges from food security to climate change, and for building more equitable and sustainable global relationships.

Summary

The transformation of China's countryside through digital technologies reveals a complex interplay between tradition and innovation, control and liberation, local practices and global forces. Throughout this exploration, we've seen how e-commerce platforms have created new economic opportunities while reshaping rural social structures, how AI and blockchain technologies have promised food safety while raising questions about who controls agricultural production, and how surveillance systems operate differently in rural contexts. These technological interventions reflect broader tensions in China's development model—between centralized control and local autonomy, between economic growth and environmental sustainability, between urban and rural priorities. This rural digital transformation offers valuable lessons for understanding technology and development globally. First, it demonstrates that technology deployment must engage with local knowledge and priorities rather than imposing urban or Western models of progress. The failures of projects that ignored rural realities stand in stark contrast to successes that built upon existing social networks and practices. Second, it shows how digital technologies can either exacerbate or reduce inequalities, depending on who controls their development and implementation. When rural communities participate in shaping technological systems, the results tend to be more equitable and sustainable. Finally, it reminds us that rural areas are not simply passive recipients of urban innovation but active sites of creativity and resistance, where people adapt, repurpose, and sometimes reject technologies to serve their own needs. As societies worldwide grapple with rural-urban divides, environmental challenges, and technological disruption, China's experience offers both cautionary tales and inspiring examples of how digital ruralities might chart alternative paths to the future.

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Xiaowei Wang

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