Negotiations and Compromises: Examining Integrative Solar PV Systems in Rural China's Agricultural Landscape

Abstract

Since becoming the global leader in solar power generation in 2017, China has seen a rapid diffusion of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems across rural areas. With low energy intensity, solar PV systems occupy large pieces of land and conflict with conventional land use (e.g., agriculture) in the rural. However, solar PV systems that integrate with agriculture and aquaculture have emerged as a co-production model and prominent landscape in rural China through state mobilization. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the countryside of South China, this paper investigates the proliferation of these integrative solar PV projects and the economic, social, and environmental impacts on rural communities, highlighting state-society negotiation and rural politics.

The rapid proliferation of solar PV systems in rural China is fundamentally driven by the economic benefits of solar energy production, which has penetrated rural China through a distorted market shaped by state and bureaucratic logic. Driven by political and economic incentives and authorized by state policies, the state-owned energy enterprises (SOEs) have negotiated through the state, bureaucratic, and rural logics to enclose large farmland and fishponds to build solar PV power plants. Along the land acquisition process, village heads, local businessmen, and leaders of lineages are underexamined local actors who have effectively facilitated the acquisition of pieces of land from individual peasants by resolving local disputes through their social networks. Their unique role has both alleviated conflicts (e.g., negotiating rents to prevent forced land grabs) and assisted state capital flowing in and exploiting their rural communities.

Despite the economic benefits, the proliferation of these integrative solar PV projects has caused slow violence in local communities, a concept raised by Robin Nixon to describe environmental and social crises that occur gradually or have delayed destruction. Although co-production is stressed by state policies, agricultural and aquacultural practices are often compromised during the construction and operation of the PV systems: after a thorough clean-up of the field, only the species that do not need much sunlight would be selected to cultivate under the solar PV panels. Meanwhile, energy companies that now control large pieces of land often prefer to partner with large corporations to sustain income from agricultural and aquacultural production; thus, peasants are stripped of their rights to engage in these practices, consequently losing their conventional livelihoods and associated income. Therefore, the proliferation of these integrative solar PV systems is also accelerating the development of large-scale, intensive, and commercialized agricultural and aquacultural practices in rural China, with government officials and outside business owners benefiting the most from this development rather than local peasants.

By integrating China's rural politics into the analysis of the social and technological construction of solar PV systems, this paper sheds light on the local dilemmas within the global renewable energy movement, particularly the socioeconomic precarity faced by marginalized groups, especially peasants, and the material entanglements of energy infrastructure with agricultural landscapes. It also highlights the agency and capacity of local actors to explore their potential in navigating these challenges.

Bio

Yijun is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Hong Kong and the Southern University of Science and Technology, studying at the two universities' interdisciplinary Humanities and Social Sciences Institutions. Her Ph.D. thesis is about the sociotechnical construction of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology in China (and beyond) since the late 20th century. By conducting extensive fieldwork to trace the different life stages of PV technology and by adopting science, technology, and society (STS) and political ecology perspectives, she aims to explore and examine the role of solar PV technology, a key renewable energy technology, in shaping the grand narrative of Anthropocene, in forming China's political agenda for constructing ecological civilization, and in influencing the social and economic lives of local communities that produce, operate, and recycle solar PV technologies. Yijun has also been selected as a 2025-2026 Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Yenching Institute through the "STS in Asia" training program, allowing her to further academic training and dissertation research at Harvard University.

With an education background in environmental engineering from the University of Toronto, Yijun has also published research articles in academic journals to examine environmental policies and technologies. With two years of working experience at environmental NGOs and multiple years of volunteering experience in sustainability and rural education, she has also initiated various public engagement and policy advocacy activities.