A New Landlord

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Received 4 March 2014Received in revised form 24 October 2014Accepted 24 October 2014Available online xxxx

Keywords:Land conictsState Forest CompanyCommunityAgricultural commodities

1. Introduction land are now representing these SFCs as a new landlord that controls

Forest Policy and Economics xxx (2014) xxxxxx

FORPOL-01210; No of Pages 8

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Forest Policy an

j ourna l homepage: www.e lAcross landscapes, conicts over land often reect deeper strugglesthat are nested within broader historical political and economicprocesses (Sikor and Lund, 2009; Hall et al., 2011). Although Vietnamhas avoided the land appropriation and exclusion associated with thelarge-scale foreign direct investment of its neighbors (Sikor, 2012),land conicts are rife. This paper examines why land conicts haverisen sharply between farmers and State Forest Companies1 (SFCs) inVietnam's uplands, and what such conicts tell us about the state'schanging presence and role in markets. Local farmers competing for

land at their expense, echoing colonial and pre-colonial land tenurearrangements. An uncomfortable t between hybrid state institutionslike the SFC and untamed market dynamics spawns bold localchallenges to state authority in areas of SFC operation. While scholarshave shown how the Vietnamese state continues to steer markets andits former state enterprises (Fforde, 2009; McElwee, 2011), our analysisof SFCs explores the opposite side of this equation: are there inherentrisks to state legitimacy in these hybrid arrangements?

Vietnam's SFCs are transitioning into hybrid state-private entitiesthat must wend their ownway. Once the local face of the state in fron- This article belongs to the Special Issue: Community F Corresponding author. Tel.: +84 988 266 766.

E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P.X. To), Sango(S. Mahanty), [email protected] (W.H. Dr1 Originally termed State Forest Enterprises (SFEs), regu

338) changed SFEs into State Forest Companies (SFCs); foterm throughout this paper.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2014.10.0051389-9341/ 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: To, P.X., et al., A neForest Policy and Economics (2014), http://dVietnamIn much of Southeast Asia, the rise of rural land conicts and struggles often parallels market expansion intofrontiers, a collage of historical state interventions, negotiations over state authority and contested legitimacy.Scholarship on Vietnam has yielded important insights on the changes wrought by new commodity boomsand hybrid forms of state engagement in markets. With the recent escalation of land conict betweenVietnam's State Forest Companies (SFCs) and farmers, this paper builds on past research to examinewhy this cur-rent wave of SFCfarmer conict is occurring, and what it means for the relationships between SFCs, farmingcommunities and the central state. Based on our analysis of two sites of intense conict, we argue that changesto SFC governance, together with rapidly evolving commodity markets and livelihood pressures are bringing anew edge to land negotiations. Policy changes that aimed to improve the efciency of Vietnam's state companieshave transformed SFCs from state-run businesses into hybrid state-private entities that are required to sustain aprot. Yet SFCs' ongoing connection with the state ensures their continued control of valuable forestlands, andemboldens SFCs to out state rules to monopolize land and engage local farmers in exploitative tenancy con-tracts. For farmers, the SFC has changed from the local face of the state, that heavily exploited timber, restrictedlocal forest access and provided some local infrastructure and services, to a privilegedmarket actor bent on prot.This situation has intensied with growing local demand for land to sustain livelihoods and to feed Chinese andglobal demand for cassava and softwood. While Vietnamese markets continue to reect a strong state hand, weshow that SFCs' hybrid identity as both a state and market actor poses new risks for the central state. Whenfarmers openly challenge SFCs over land and reference colonial arrangements through the language of a newlandlord, they question the legitimacy and role of the state in the face of new market pressures andopportunities.

2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Article history:a b s t r a c ta r t i c l e i n f oA new landlord (a ch mi)? Communi(SFCs) in Vietnam

Phuc Xuan To a,, Sango Mahanty b, Wolfram H. Dressla Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacic, The Australian National Univb ARC Future Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacic, The Austc ARC Future Fellow, School of Geography, The University of Melbourne, Australiaorestry.

[email protected]).latory changes in 1991 (Decreer consistency, we use the latter

w landlord (a chmi)? Cox.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.20, land conict and State Forest Companies

c

ty, Canberra ACT 0200 Australian National University, Australia

d Economics

sev ie r .com/ locate / fo rpo ltier areas, set up to centrally control forest production and consolidatestate authority, SFC governance reforms have tried to transform thesecumbersome entities into efcient market actors. However, formerstate enterprises are subject to continued surveillance and governmentinuence, leaving themunable to effectively overcomepast inefciencies(McElwee, 2004; Gainsborough, 2010). Meanwhile, public discourse inthe national media has started to represent SFCs as a predatory market

mmunity, land conict and State Forest Companies (SFCs) in Vietnam,14.10.005

2 P.X. To et al. / Forest Policy and Economics xxx (2014) xxxxxxactor that monopolizes forest access in contravention of state forest landallocation policies, and prots from exploitative local labor contracts. Inthis context, SFCs are being described as a new landlord (a chmi),echoing exploitative land relations in colonial times. We nd thatthrough this narrative villagers question SFC legitimacy, perceiving it asa privileged actor on the state's teat (To et al., 2013). Through this,wider questions arise about the evolving nature of the Vietnamesestate and its dynamic relationship with rural communities in the throwsof a commodity boom.

We start by reviewing current knowledge on the causes of landconict in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Although Vietnam has escapedthe land grabs aficting its neighbors (Sikor, 2012), domestic SFCshave made parallel claims to, and consolidated control over, land andproductive resources. These hybrid entities produce complex relation-ships of authority, power and access across scale (Hall et al., 2011;Sikor and Lund, 2009), whose most visible expressions are land negoti-ations and conicts. Past Vietnamese scholarship on land has uncoveredhow land negotiations are both mediated and challenged by stateauthority (e.g. Kerkvliet, 2005; Sowerwine, 2004; Harms, 2012;Nguyen, 2007; Labbe, 2011). Yet, it is timely to assess how the causesand implications of land conict might be changing with the hybridiza-tion of SFCs.

We then outline the methodology for this research. Our analysis ofSFCfarmer land conict starts with the discussion of changes to SFCgovernance at a time of rapidly growing Chinese and global demandfor acacia and cassava. We then consider how SFC governance changeshave contributed to two cases of land conict between SFCs and localcommunities in the uplands. In both cases, we are witnessing a secondround of SFC-related land conict: the rst came with the initial estab-lishment of SFCs in the 1950s to manage forests and timber (McElwee,2004), while the current wave stems from their competition withlocal farmers to secure productive land for lucrative commodity mar-kets. This second wave is largely the result of recolonization of thesame territory for another valued resource productive land bynewly hybridized SFCs. We examine the character and implications ofthis reconguration of SFC relationships to land and local communities,and the risks it may pose for statesociety relations.

2. Theoretical context: land, markets and statesociety relations

In much of Southeast Asia, rural land conicts and struggles oftenoccur at the intersection of frontier market expansion and historicalstate interventions (Hall et al., 2011). Here, legacies of state regulationcan interact in complex ways with local norms, cultures and interests,framing the context for land access and use (Hall et al., 2011; vonBenda-Beckmann et al., 2006). In particular, Vietnam's recent spike inland conicts in areas of intensied commodity production for acaciaand cassava markets highlights how commodication and marketprocesses may recursively frame negotiations between state actorsand other land users. Vietnam provides a critical window into market-state dynamics, emerging from a major period of political economictransition, with its once socialist economy undergoing various marketreforms and decentralization.

Historically, Vietnam's upland forests have been signicant for theconsolidation of state authority, with varying degrees of acquiescenceand resistance from resident populations (Sowerwine, 2011: 59).These frontier territories were often of central importance to formerVietnamese rulers (Sowerwine, 2011), as they struggled to effectivelymanage the non-Confucian peoples who shared their extendedfrontiers in ways that would enhance their legitimacy and control(Woodside, 1988). French rule saw the systematic mapping and xingof upland territories and borders (Kunstadter, 1967 in Sowerwine,2011: 59), setting forest reserves in 1891, and imposing restrictionson swidden in the 1930s (Sowerwine, 2011: 60). The nexus betweencontrolling upland forests and people and strengthening state authority

galvanized during the revolutionary period (194675), with border

Please cite this article as: To, P.X., et al., A new landlord (a chmi)? CoForest Policy and Economics (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.20areas gaining even greater strategic signicance (Sowerwine, 2011:613). In these locations, State Forest Corporations (then State ForestEnterprises) played a central role in timber extraction and restrictingshifting cultivation (McElwee, 2004: 113). The tensions experiencedduring initial SFC formation and associated restrictions to local accesshave only intensied over time, as market pressures create more in-tense competition for land. This is in spite of the closure of severalSFCs and efforts to govern SFCs more effectively (McElwee, 2004).

The phrase landlord (a ch in Vietnamese), seen in recent com-mentary about SFCs, harks back to land relations in the French colonialperiod (the 1720th centuries) when existing inequities in land distri-bution were solidied (Taylor, 2013). Through the auctioning of com-munal and abandoned lands to French citizens and collaborators inthe South, a powerful landlord class emerged in the South, serviced bytenant farmers and sharecropping, as well as greater land accumulationin central and northern Vietnam (Dao, 1993; Ngo, 1991: 44). Exploit-ative sharecropping arrangements stripped tenants of about half oftheir gross income, while they had to bear all the cultivation costs,often through loans from landlords on exorbitant terms (Ngo, 1991:467). Along with hunger and exploitation (White, 1986: 58), thecolonial tenancy system also engendered tension and distrust betweenlandlords and tenants (Ngo, 1991: 51). The contemporary use ofthe term new landlord for SFCs thus reects strong perceptions ofexploitation at a heavy local cost, as in colonial times.

While colonial policies concentrated agricultural holdings, subse-quent state practices such as boundary demarcation, registration andmapping facilitated the enclosure of natural resources for both privateand state accumulation, with the state becoming a key arbiter of formalresource entitlements (Sikor, 2012; Sowerwine, 2004). Yet informalclaims to and use of land persist, often in direct challenge to laws(Ho-Tai and Sidel, 2013; To, 2013). These factors have contributed tointransigent resource conicts in the Vietnamese uplands, particularlybetween state agencies (e.g. SFCs) and local people asserting customaryrights or new migrants hungry for land (To et al., 2013; Hoang, 2011;McElwee, 2004). At the same time, land-related interactions shape theimage and practice of the state from the perspective of local and non-state actors (Sikor, 2012;Migdal, 2001). Furthermore, the government'sproperty formalization projects such as land allocation were never ascomplete in the uplands as in the lowlands (Kerkvliet, 2005; Sikor,2012) and so allowed degrees of local exibility in the implementationof land policies and autonomy over land. Thus, recent resource conictsreect the changing context and role of state enterprises, as well asoverlapping claims and tensions around state reach in these frontiersareas.

Various scholars question a monolithic notion of the state as acoherent, controlling body that governs its territory and populacevia a rational and organized bureaucracy (e.g. Gainsborough, 2010;Migdal, 2001). The natural tendency, with Vietnam's single partystate, is to attribute ultimate power to the communist party and eliteofcials, whose authority is evident through centrally framed policy aswell as key political and government appointments (Ho-Tai and Sidel,2013; Kerkvliet, 2004). Yet Migdal highlights how state practices canin fact make visible signicant internal tensions amongst state actors(2001); in Vietnam, for instance, evidence is building of the tensionsfaced by commune ofcials in balancing central and local agendas andtheir resulting non-compliance with ofcial policies (Sikor, 2004;Mahanty and Dang, in press). Kerkvliet's work shows that stateauthority is equivocal in the face of local resistance (2004), reectingthe state's internal complexities, diffuse edges and mutable powers.Indeed, perceptions of the central state and how this changes innewdo-mains of action, the gap between state image and practice in the realmof forests, as well as differences between the central and local state arecentral to our analysis.

In relation to forests, the Vietnamese central state operates incontingent ways that at times reinforce state authority and at others

weaken it. Ideas regarding what the state is and what the state ought


frontiers (Sikor, 2012; Nguyen, 2001). Echoing the efforts of earlierVietnamese and French rulers, the state used SFCs as one of severalmechanisms to civilize the uplands and extend its functional authority

3P.X. To et al. / Forest Policy and Economics xxx (2014) xxxxxxto be, are realized through state policy and the local practices and reac-tions of local people in terms of resource rights (Sikor, 2012). As Lundand Boone (2013: 1) note, Struggles over property maybe as muchabout the scope and structure of authority as about access to resources,and can therefore hold important insights about these broader politicalnegotiations. We explore this dynamic in the case of SFCs competingwith local villagers for land.

Our research particularly considers the new challenges posed bymarkets for state authority. From its distributive role within highly con-trolledmarkets, the state has become amarket facilitator (Fforde, 2009)and gatekeeper (Gainsborough, 2010) as it rethinks the position of itsSFCs.We explore how the related processes of SFC reform, forestland al-location and commodity markets contribute to recent land conicts inthe uplands, and what this illustrates about the evolving Vietnamesestate and its relationship to rural society.

3. Field methods

Our analysis draws on twomajor data collection efforts. Data on SFCrestructuring and how this intersects with historical and current landuse were gained through 70 interviews and four focus group meetingsduring To's visits to 16 SFCs in 2012. Additionally, in 20122013, Tojoined an expert team to advise Vietnam's Forestry Administration(VNFOREST) on SFC restructuring. This allowed further participant ob-servation in government meetings and additional interviews with keyinformants in central government and civil society (eight policymakers,12 senior forestry experts and three NGO leaders). The advisory groupvisited two conict sites (Fig. 1): (i) Dong Bac (Lang Son province)and (ii) Long Dai (Quang Binh province), which are the focal casesdiscussed in this paper. Here, further interviews were conducted withvillage headmen. The team also held focus group discussions (FGDs)with village leaders to understand historical land relations and contem-porary land use practices by different groups in the village. In-depth in-terviews were conducted with 25 households (41% of total villagehouseholds) in the rst study village (Cot Coi), and with 30 households(43% of the total village households) in the second village (Khe Cat).These interviewswere used to examinehousehold landuses and chang-es over time. In-depth interviews also provided data on how differentgroups of villagers viewed local and SFC land use practices. Direct obser-vations in the villages provided important insights to the reections,views and activities of different actors involved in the land conicts.

Major reports from government and consultants on land and forestshave also been reviewed, along with government policy and legislationon land, forests and state corporations.

4. State Forest Companies and land conict in the uplands

4.1. The changing governance of State Forest Companies

Changes to the governance of State Forest Companies (formerlyEnterprises) are an essential starting point to understanding thecurrent wave of land conict, given their central role in Vietnam'spost-independence forest management regime. From a period of con-trol by the French colonial administration the Vietnamese governmentnationalized all of the country's forests after gaining independence in1954 (Sowerwine, 2004; McElwee, 2004). During the 1960s1980s,these forests were managed by a system of SFCs under the Ministry ofForestry or provincial Peoples' Committees (PCs). Formally, local peoplewere excluded from themanagement and use of these forests. However,as forests were poorly demarcated, and forest regulations poorlyenforced, informal local use continued. During this period, SFCs primar-ily focused on timber extraction rather than forest protection (Nguyen,2001; McElwee, 2004). Timber extraction peaked in the rst half of the1980s, correspondingwith a pronounced loss of forest cover in Vietnam.In some upland areas, SFCs also played a central developmental role,

providing public goods while consolidating state control of these

Please cite this article as: To, P.X., et al., A new landlord (a chmi)? CoForest Policy and Economics (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.20into these frontiers so as to gradually assimilate these local communitieswith those of the civilized lowlands (McElwee, 2004; Salemink, 2011).Specically, SFCs built schools, roads, and local markets for theirworkers, which were also available to neighboring communities(Nguyen, 2001). In remote areas where commune and district PCswere relatively absent, SFCs became the local face of the state (or thelocal state), undertaking household registration and social securityservices (Nguyen, 2001). SFCs in border areas were also expected toprotect national security. The formation of SFCs and their daily practiceswere thus central to state efforts to extend its functional authority in up-land frontiers.

The late 1980s saw a crisis in forestry, due to the nationalgovernment's weakened nancial situation wrought by the end of theSoviet era, as well as timber over-exploitation by SFCs. By 1986, fewerthan 50% of the SFCs had available timber and, with budget cuts fromgovernment, were left without operating resources (Nguyen, 2001).Conicts erupted as villagers demanded access to land for cultivationthat they believed had been encroached and monopolized by SFCs(Sikor, 1998;McElwee, 2004).With the opening of Vietnamesemarketsin 1986, the market for illegally harvested timber also ourished, andvillagers went to SFC-managed forests to glean any remaining timberfor sale (Sikor and To, 2011; Hoang, 2011). Small-scale illegal loggingwas another reason for enduring forest conict. This became a signi-cant timeof forest loss due to SFCs' activities, informal logging and forestclearance for swidden cultivation (Nguyen, 2001).

In response to the forest sector crisis, the government commissioneda major Forestry Sector Review from 19891991. In view of decliningforest cover and theweakened position of SFCs, the review recommend-ed shifting forest policy fromone of timber exploitation to forest protec-tion and development. Forestry was to be restructured in line with thei mi (renovation) policy, toward less state control and more privatesector engagement. The 1990s therefore saw reduced timber harvestfrom natural forests, reduction in the number of SFCs, and programsto allocate production forests for use by local households.2

These changes to forest management occurred in parallel with stateinitiatives to increase SFC autonomy and reduce their dependence oncentral budgets. Decree 338 (1991), which changed state forest enter-prises into SFCs required their nancial independence from the state,with nominal management by the provincial PCs or the Ministry ofAgriculture and Rural Development (MARD). By October 1993, some411 SFCs had been formed, of which 69 (16.8%) were managed byMARD and the remaining 343 (83.2%) by provincial PCs (Nguyen,2001). The Land Law in 1993 added the potential for productiveforestland to be transferred from state to state andnon-state entities, in-cluding local communities, premised on the constitutional principlethat land belongs to the people, and is managed by the state; thestate will allocate land to land users for stable and long-term uses(Constitution, 2014). Though some SFCs transferred their land to localpeople, many resisted (Nguyen, 2001).

By the second half of the 1990s, the over-optimistic vision of self-nancing SFCswas evident, with the ViceMinister ofMARD's statementthat Almost all SFCs were the same as before (Nguyen, 2001: 207).Specically, SFCs continued to draw on state budgets for their large-scale forest protection and development projects (e.g. Program 327 in19931998, and Program 661 in 19992010, both for reforestation ondegraded lands). From 1991, SFCs underwent four restructurings, themost recent being Resolution 28 (2003) and Decree 200 (2004). Asclearly stated in Resolution 28, the foundation for the SFC restructuringwas that SFCs demonstrated ineffective land use and low economic

2 Under the Law on Forest Protection and Development, three forest categories weredesignated (special use, protection, and production), each managed through different in-

stitutional arrangements.


4 P.X. To et al. / Forest Policy and Economics xxx (2014) xxxxxxperformance, and were becoming heavily embroiled in local conicts.In response, the resolution restricted the remit of SFCs to productionforest and specied that SFCs would be regulated by the EnterpriseLaw. The resolution also permitted SFCs to contract forestland to otherentities, including local households, for forest protection and produc-tion. The resolution allows the dismantling of SFCs that made a lossfor three consecutive years. Finally, SFCs were required to transfer anyschools, roads, irrigation, clinics and electricity infrastructure they hadconstructedwith state budgets to provincial PCs for the use of local pop-ulations. SFC restructuring reduced the existing labor force from about

Fig. 1. Location o

Please cite this article as: To, P.X., et al., A new landlord (a chmi)? CoForest Policy and Economics (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2068,500 people to 16,600 by 2011 (MARD, 2012). Many former em-ployees remained in the area, now requiring land for cultivation, butsome became landless (To et al., 2013).

Decree 200 emphasized that SFCs would only retain the land if theydemonstrated the capacity to use it effectively. Given their loss of labor,however, SFCs had to hire contract labor to fulll this requirement. Forexample, in 2012, Long Dai SFC hired over 800 external workers(including locals) to supplement its less than 200 in-house staff. Thiswas the only way for SFCs to retain land while accessing markets forfast growing timber species. Thus, local people hired by SFCs became

f eld sites.


incorporated into a mode of production that diverted their labor fromagriculture, but often on exploitative terms.

Meanwhile, markets for fast growing softwood species and cassavawere expanding rapidly in the early 2000s in Vietnam. For instance,

demarcation as the reason for this slow progress. The director observes

5P.X. To et al. / Forest Policy and Economics xxx (2014) xxxxxxthat although much of the 12,700 ha was never formally allocated, it isnonetheless being cultivated by local people. In fact the retained landwas the most productive, and the company intended to develop thiswith the support of its mother company, VinaFor, through state bankloans at preferential interest rates. Evenwith reports of villager encroach-ment on their lands, in 2012, the company reported an income of around470,000 USD from its plantation harvest.

Cot Coi, a small village in Tan Thanh commune, Huu Lung district,was established in 2001. It was an offshoot of a larger neighboringvillage, populated by Tay and Nung ethnic minorities.3 In addition tothese ethnic minority groups, the population of Cot Coi was also joinedby retrenched (lowland Kinh) workers from the Huu Lung forest enter-prise in 2005. Before the establishment of Cot Coi, the surrounding areahad been farmed by neighboring Tay and Nung villagers, who hadcleared land near streams for paddy rice and on the neighboring hillsfor swidden. When the government established Huu Lung enterprisein the 1960s, management rights for this forestland were assigned tothe enterprise, disregarding villagers' existing claims. At that time,many villagers continued to work the lands they regarded as their

3 Vietnam has 54 ethnic groupswith Kinh as the largest ethnicity group that dominatedthe lowland and accounts for 80% of the country's 87 million people as the total popula-tion. Tay and Nung are the two ethnic minorities, with their population totaling about 3million (General Statistics Ofce, 2012).Most of the Tay andNung live in the northernpartwood processing became the fth largest export earner at about1518% of GDP annually (To and Tran, 2013), driven largely byinternational demand (To and Tran, 2013) as well as donor projects(e.g. from the World Bank, German Reconstruction Bank) with con-cessional loans to smallholders. Many local households who gainedforestland certicates in the 1990s were also able to establish forestplantation and become active participants in the timber market.Providing incomes of up to 70 million Vietnamese Dong (3200 USD)per ha after 56 years (To and Tran, 2013), timber markets turnedforestlands into an important vehicle for capital accumulation.

Cassava has followed a different but equally signicant growth tra-jectory. Once used mainly for household consumption, the area undercassava nationally has grown rapidly in response to heightened demandfrom China, reaching 560,000 ha in 2011 (General Statistics Ofce,2012). Income from cassava, about 1800 USD per ha annually (Tran,2014), has driven many, particularly landless, upland villagers to en-croach SFC forestlands for cassava cultivation. It is in this context ofland hunger and rapid expansion of land-based commodity marketsthat SFCs have become serious competitors for land.

4.2. The conict between Dong Bac Forest Company and Cot Coi village,Lang Son Province

DongBac Forest Companyhas followed a trajectory similar to the SFCsdiscussed above. Currently owned by the Vietnam Forest Corporation(VinaFor) of MARD, the company manages 21,826 ha of forestland inthree provinces including Lang Son, based on land use certicates grantedto the company in 2001. The companywas formerly known as Huu LungForest Enterprise (established in 1961) and managed valuable timberstocks until the 1980s, when they had declined. The degraded areaswere replanted with fast growing acacia and eucalyptus species in the1990s. In 2004, Huu Lung became the Dong Bac Forest Company bywhich time it had to allocate 12,700 ha of its now cleared land (58% ofits total land holdings) to local authorities for distribution to local people.After nearly ten years, only 1500 ha have been transferred to the provin-cial PC of Lang Son. The company director cites: Nomoney for boundaryuplands.

Please cite this article as: To, P.X., et al., A new landlord (a chmi)? CoForest Policy and Economics (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.20own. On the ground, the enterprise did not actively prevent swiddencultivation, which gave the villagers a degree of exibility in workingthe land.

In time,whenCot Coi villagewas established, thedistrict PC requestedthat the company allocate land to the villagers for housing and cultiva-tion. In response, the company gave each household about 0.30.4 ha ofland. However, the land was not productive due to a lack of water;some households grew cassava and fruit trees, but others left the landidle. Asmore retirees from the company settled in the village, they too re-quired land. Some took seemingly unused areas of land that had wateraccess to cultivate paddy rice. Others bought paddy land from neighbor-ing villages near Cot Coi. Many went into the forest to appropriate areasthat were not actively used by the company. Land conicts occurred asa result of overlapping claims between the company on the one handand local people including the company's former workers on the otherhand. We describe these conicts below.

Cot Coi villagers face a shortage of productive land: 25% of villagehouseholds have no access to forestland (i.e. land formerly used forswidden cultivation) and 17% are without access to paddy land. Toearn a living, many villagers now travel to the neighboring province ashired farm or construction labor (earning 710 USD per day). However,these jobs are seasonal and the income unstable. Our household datareveals that 73% of the households in the village lack rice for up to sixmonths each year.

Cot Coi households reported that the strongmarket for acacia andconstraints in cash income motivated them to nd plantation land.One obvious option was to encroach on the land now claimed byDong Bac company, particularly the areas where the company hadnot yet planted trees. Consequently, villagers currently cultivatesome 42% of the company's land. After the company harvested itstrees, villagers moved onto the land to plant their own trees. Someboldly claimed the land before harvest, in order to clear bushes andgrass for future cultivation after harvest. A small group even wentso far as to sabotage the company's seedlings to make the room fortheir own trees.

Villager encroachment onto company land has triggered conicts,with frequent quarrels reported between villagers and the company'smanagement division. Many villagers have voiced their frustrationand anger to the village headmen and commune ofcials. On occasion,villagers have written joint letters of complaint to the chairman of thecommune PC and the company's director. At other times, they havetraveled to the commune PC ofce and asked the chairman to workwith the company to get them more land. Land conicts in Cot Coioccur on a daily basis. A company ofcial in charge of land in Cot Coiexplained: We are very busy dealing with local people [about landconict] it is our daily work. (Interview, November 2012).

Cot Coi's land conicts have been particularly problematic forcommune and district authorities. A vice chairman of the communePC supervising Cot Cot complained: We are very tired; we receivemany petitions from villagers. Addressing land conicts consumes 70percent of my time. Look at my le [pointing to a bulging le in his ofce]most of these documents are related to land conicts. My primary job is toaddress these conicts. (Interview, November 2012). Although the 2003Land Law limits the role of local authorities at village and communelevel to one of conict mediation and advice, villagers expect more.One difculty is the power asymmetry between the company, backedby Vinafor a powerful state entity on the one hand and villagersand local authorities on the other hands.When conict occurs, the com-pany relies on the Land Law to defend their formal land rights, accusinglocal people of violating these. Invoking a state ethic of care, fromwhichstate corporations are now excused, the company has tried to pressurelocal authorities at the village and commune to solve the problem.The villagers are yours, you have to address the problem. (The company'sdirector speaking to the chairman of the commune PC, November2012). In this situation, local authorities at village, communeanddistrict

level are caught between villagers and the company.


for village distribution, Long Dai failed to comply. The company main-tains its production by employing around 1000 people with anadditional 1500 part-time workers on seasonal contracts. VNFORESTconsiders Long Dai to be a model SFC for its Forest Stewardship Councilcertication4 and healthy prots. The company maintains that local

6 P.X. To et al. / Forest Policy and Economics xxx (2014) xxxxxxIn spite of its formal power via land use certicates and connec-tions with the central state the company has been unable to preventvillagers from using land under its control. Rather than coercively re-strict access, the company has tried to calm villagers by institutionaliz-ing their access to the land through mechanisms that also secure ashare of revenues for the company. One such arrangement is a joint-venture (lin doanh), in use since 2009. Under lin doanh, the companyallows villagers to plant acacia on encroached land, but villagers mustreturn a share of harvest proceeds to the SFC. Lin doanh resemblesthe share-cropping arrangements of the colonial era. But unlike its colo-nial predecessor, the company covers some of the villagers' cultivationcosts. In Cot Coi, three different types of lin doanh exist, which providehigher returns to the company where they invest more on agriculturalinputs.

Lin doanh have become a source of tension between villagers andthe company, particularly in relation to the level of return required bythe company relative to villagers. Villagers complained that theywould be unable to achieve the required payments to the company,let alone gaining any benets for themselves. When we asked whatwould happen if the harvest is lower than expected, one villager said,I will ask the company to take the trees leaves. I have no more than thatto pay. (Interview, November 2012). Meanwhile the company directoranswered if the villagers could not meet the agreed level of return,villagers would have to sell their houses to compensate. (Interview,November 2012). The director saw lin doanh as a business contract a legally binding arrangement where villagers took on a risk. Indeed,the contract effectively guaranteed benets to the companywhile pass-ing on all of the risks to villagers; for instance, if young treeswere lost todisease or physical damage, the lin doanh contract would still require apayment from the villagers to the company.

The lin doanh has come to be viewed by the villagers as an exploit-ative mechanism, and is a major reason for their labeling of thecompany as a new landlord. Ofcials from village, commune anddistrict PC shared this view. The chairman of the district PC stated ex-plicitly: There is nothing left for the villagers after they pay the company.The company is holding the handle of a knife and the villagers are holdingthe blade. This is really a form of exploitation. (Interview, November2012). In spite of their concerns about exploitation, many Cot Coivillagers still entered lin doanh agreements to gain legal access toland, and in the hope that accesswould endure after harvest. As one vil-lager said: One we've obtained the [lin doanh] contract, there is no waythe company can kick us off the land. (Villager, November 2012). Mean-while the company saw the contract as a legitimate legal arrangement.

In sum, land conicts in Cot Coi have a number of triggers. Theyoccur in the context of increasing demand for land, triggered bymarketsfor timber. Village land is also in short supply for newly-establishedhouseholds. Beyond the lack of land, villagers have a strong sense ofinjustice vis--vis the company. They believe that the company hascaptured a vast tract of land, but production on this land rests upontheir labor. Villagers with limited or no landholdings have no choicebut to either encroach on company land or participate in a lin doanharrangement. Villagers test the SFC's power through informal directoccupation as well as entering lease arrangements with the intent ofachieving longer-term land occupation.

4.3. The conict between Long Dai Forest Company and Khe Cat villagers,Quang Binh Province

Long Dai Forest Enterprise was established in 1981, and becameLong Dai Forest Company in 2005, and is under the control of the pro-vincial PC of Quang Binh. The company controls 89,000 ha of productionforest, of which 61,000 ha is natural forest, and the rest is plantation. Asthe government permits the extraction of high value timber fromnatural forests, the company harvested 8500 m3 in 2011. In 2012 thecompany earned about 15 million USD from selling timber and resin.

Despite Decree 200 mandating SFCs to return land to the provincial PC

Please cite this article as: To, P.X., et al., A new landlord (a chmi)? CoForest Policy and Economics (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.20conicts are almost non-existent, affecting only 63 ha of its land; oneof these conict sites is Truong Son commune, the location of Khe Catvillage.5

In 2012, Khe Cat had a population of 303 people across 77 house-holds, all of whom were Bru-Van Kieu ethnic minorities.6 About 70%of households were classied as poor, with incomes well below thecountry's average poverty rate. When the rst households came toKhe Cat in 1972, they cleared land near tracks or water to grow cassavaand swidden rice.When the Long Dai Forest Enterprisewas established,it was given a substantial forest area to manage, including all of thevillagers' swidden land. In 1996, after the enterprise secured its landuse certicate for the area, it prevented villagers from accessing theirformer lands. Rather than resisting, most villagers searched for farmland in other forest areas or close to home. In 2003, with state subsidies,LongDai planted acacia trees on previously cleared land, including areasclose to Khe Cat. Lacking labor, the enterprise hired the villagers, prom-ising them a share of the harvest. Once the treeswere planted, however,the company restricted villagers from continued forest access.

In 2005, the construction of a new road broughtmajor change to KheCat, providing villagers with new opportunities to access commercialmodern goods. The road allowed the villagers to take more timberfrom Long Dai's natural forest an activity that enhanced householdincomes. In time, however, population expansion and land shortages re-inforced poverty in Khe Cat. While households once had small paddiesand plots of land, major ooding destroyedmost plots and paddy eldshad little to no irrigation potential. In response, villagers grewbeans andpeanuts in drier areas, which amounted to only 5 ha for the entirevillage. Upland forest resources thus remained important to locallivelihoods. Village interviews showed that the average annual house-hold income from cassava is 6070 USD, and from rattan 1015 USD.Timber from natural forests, however, was the most signicant incomesource according to thehousehold survey: nearly all KheCat householdshad male adults engaged in logging, with each person earning onaverage 25 USD per month.

In 2007, Long Dai SFC started to harvest the acacia trees planted in2003, but planned against sharing the harvest with Khe Cat villagerson the basis that they had already been paid for their labor. However,villagers demanded a share from the harvest, citing their additionallabor invested in tree planting and protection. Taking matters intotheir own hands, in 2009, 17 households sold trees on company landto a district buyer for 1500 USD. When the buyer came to fell thetrees, the company tried to stop him, using its land use certicate toassert their legal rights. Unable to complete their sale, the villagersthen organized to impede the company's harvest and sale of the sametrees. In the end, neither the company nor the villagers could harvestthe trees. Moreover, although the company could harvest trees thatwere not planted by the villagers, the villagers acted to restrict thecompany's ability to replant after harvest by claiming and planting theland with their own cassava. When a Long Dai staff member asked acassava farmer in Khe Cat: Who allows you to plant cassava on ourland? the villager lifted his shirt and pointed to his belly saying, mystomach allows me. We have nothing to eat. (Interview, December2012).

High demand for acacia has further heightened tensions in Khe Cat.In 2010, four households in Khe Cat earned up to 3500 USD from selling

4 Draft report on assessment of SFCs submitted to the Ofce of Government in June2013.5 The Company's report 394 dated 25 October 2012.6 Bru-Van Kieu is one of Vietnam's ethnic minority groups. Their current population isabout 3 million, most of whom live in Quang Binh and some neighboring provinces.


acacia trees they had planted near their homes, a substantial gure for avillage with otherwise very low incomes. Learning from this, and with

state control into upland frontiersthe consolidation of the socialiststate.

As a market actor operating on the principle of prot maximization,SFCs have adopted two mechanisms for retaining the land. First, they

7P.X. To et al. / Forest Policy and Economics xxx (2014) xxxxxxencouragement from timber buyers and woodcutters, more villagersclaimed land from the company for tree planting. In the area near KheCat, some 59 ha of land were contested as Khe Cat villagers' encroach-ment into the company's land for planting cassava and acacia.

Commune and district PCs have struggled to manage the land con-ict in Khe Cat, despite villagers' appeals. Initially, the commune PCdid not take villagers' concerns seriously, emphasizing that they hadno legal rights to the land. Over time, villagers' pressure on the com-mune PC intensied. In 2010, when the commune PC held a vote forlocal ofcials, all the villagers in Khe Cat chose not to vote. The villagers'refusal to vote shocked the commune and district PCs, in a sensereecting the villagers' rejection of the state. The commune PCresponded to the voting boycott rapidly, sending a senior ofcial ofthe same ethnic background as the Khe Cat villagers to persuade themto participate in the elections, and promised to address villagers'concern over land shortage more seriously. After this, the communePC invited Khe Cat leaders to a meeting to hear their concerns, as wellas visiting the sites of conict. This consultation yielded a report forthe district PC, which recognized the role of land shortage in triggeringland conict in the village. The report appealed for the provincial PC andLong Dai company to address the villagers' land shortage. Non-government organizations (NGOs) then entered the fray, aiming tomediate the land conict. Villagers sought to strengthen their landclaims by working with an NGO in the district township, which wasnetworked with other NGOs working on land tenure issues. In thisway, theNGO could get information on national land tenure discussions,and with the Democracy Act,7 could provide villagers, commune anddistrict ofcials with relevant information, delivered through trainingworkshops. The NGO invited a National Television team to Khe Cat torecord villagers concerns about land issues, resulting in a 30-minutedocumentary aired in 2012, that generated considerable interestamongst policy makers at different levels of government and public atlarge. In May 2012, the NGO took key villagers from Khe Cat, as wellas commune and district ofcials to a workshop on land conicts inHanoi. These processes led to public criticism of the company and astronger imperative for it to allocate land back to the villagers.

Under pressure, the company nally agreed to return 500 ha of landto the villagers substantially less than the villagers' requested3100 ha. Furthermore, not all of the land returned to the villagerscould be brought into use, as it was infertile or was difcult to access.Struggles over land continued to bubble along at the time of research.

5. Discussion and Conclusions

Vietnam's reforms toward privatization and market liberalizationhave created complex hybrid state-private entitiesincluding SFCs.These SFCs are state-aligned, while also being engaged in evolvingland-based commoditymarkets and competing directly with local com-munities for cultivable land. In addition to the increased social differen-tiation and landscape change associated with these markets (Sikor andNguyen, 2005), these cases highlight their role in land conict. In Cot Coiand Khe Cat, the combination of rapid market expansion together withchanging governance of SFCs has contributed to the protracted nature ofthese land conicts. Although land conicts existed prior to the SFC gov-ernance reforms, this recent spate of conicts is exhibiting importantdifferences to prior ones. Current SFCs operate as hybrid market actors,embracing the idea of state control and prot maximization; these SFCscompete with local communities over land intended for the productionof cash crops for global markets. This contrasts with the previous devel-opmental and logging role of SFEs,whichwas effectively an extension of

7 TheDemocratic Act passed by theNational Assembly in 2005mandated the communePC to be transparent to local people on the issues local people need to know, discuss and to

decide.

Please cite this article as: To, P.X., et al., A new landlord (a chmi)? CoForest Policy and Economics (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.20have resisted the state's requirement to allocate some of their land tolocal communities. Second, to cope with their lack of labor and capital,SFCs use their formal title documents to enter new lease arrangements,and also hire villagers as laborers. Under these arrangements, SFCs se-cure a large share of the harvest, while villagers gain a much smallershare. Villagers with limited or no landholdings have little choice butto enter into such arrangements, with their limited returns. Therelationship between the company and villagers thus takes on anexploitative tone. It is these unequal arrangements that underpinthe new landlord narrative, a term which echoes exploitative share-cropping arrangements under colonialism; the term new is usedsince the old landlord systemwas abolished by the government duringits 1950s land reforms. Although the state has partially divested itselffrom SFCs, at least in nancial terms, villagers cannot disentangle thestateSFC relationship so clearly; they see their new landlord as anarm of the state, and one with diminished legitimacy in their eyes,because of its role in sustaining social inequality and exploitation.

The new landlord narrative also has wider ramications. The cycleof land retention and exploitation of village labor by SFCs observed inour two cases is not something that was countenanced at Vietnam's in-dependence or when state enterprises were established.With their his-torical and enduring networks into the central state, SFCs are wellpositioned to capture the benets of land use and labor contracts. Theirony that this new landlord is a former state entity is not lost on thevillagers, particularly when the state previously gained its legitimacyamongst rural people on the promise of equal access to land for all(Ho-Tai and Sidel, 2013). The term new also highlights the changingsignicance of commodity markets. Thus, although the state hasattempted to step back from its creation the newly reformed SFC it remains bound to and identied with it partly due to intensifyingmarket conditions. Hearing the language of new landlord in themedia is deeply uncomfortable for central state actors as the termdelegitimizes state authority,8 as it challenges the precept of egalitarianland distribution. The resulting lack of state legitimacy is evident whenvillagers questioning its authority to mediate property claims. Theseland conicts thus highlight both the contingent and limited nature ofstate authority and how SFCs are contributing to diminished statelegitimacy.

Furthermore, internal fractures were emerging between centralstate actors and the local state (village, commune and district levelleadership in particular). Kerkvliet (2004) notes that local leaders whoaspire for positions at higher levels of administrative authorities areconcerned to please authorities more than the people, whereas local of-cials tend to bemore responsive to local concerns. This is supported byboth case studies, where villagers gained the sympathy of communeand district PCs. The villagers brought this about through their threat-ened boycott of local elections. The resulting tensions between localand central state actors add to a growing body of evidence about frac-tures between different levels of state administration (Sikor 2004;Mahanty and Dang, in press).

The results also contribute to wider understandings of how statepower and legitimacy are moderated in specic contexts (Migdal,2001; Sharma andGupta, 2009). In this study,markets played an impor-tant role in reducing state authority, serving to intensify existing chal-lenges to the central state as a facilitator of land access and control.Hall et al. (2011:17) have observed similar processes in other parts ofSoutheast Asia. Acacia and cassava markets have been particularly

8 The rst author of this paper received strong criticism from some senior governmentofcials when he cited the term new landlord for his report on land conict written inVietnamese language. One of them said that the term itself may call villagers to protest

for land.


signicant in the Vietnamese uplands. On the one hand, these marketshave prompted local actors to seek access to land and, through this, toexpanded livelihood opportunities. On the other hand, they have en-couraged the SFCs to hold on to land and accumulate capital throughtheir contractual arrangements with local villagers in exclusionaryways. While trying to remain at arms-length the state remains closelyinvolved in markets through SFCs.

In sum, although the Vietnamese state claims to have more or lesscompleted theirwork on property reforms (Sikor, 2012), the prevalenceof land conicts between SFCs and local people highlights continuingchallenges and frictions at the level of state representations and prac-tices (Sharma and Gupta, 2009), and between different levels of state

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8 P.X. To et al. / Forest Policy and Economics xxx (2014) xxxxxxon land, based on diverse foundations to legitimize particular actors'claims. In this sense, land conicts represent instanceswhere the claimsand authority of the state in relation to land, as well as its coherence ofimage and representation come under question, as villagers push backboth at the local and national levels through their strong resistance toSFCs. The emergence of SFCs as a new landlord constituted by thestate and motivated by commercial imperatives has many local andvisible implications in terms of livelihoods and statesociety relations.In the longer term, land conicts may prove to be an important driverof change, both for land allocation policies and the future reform ofstate owned enterprises including SFCs.

Acknowledgments

We thank three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.This paper is based on research supported by Forest Trends. Aspects ofthis research were supported by the Australian Research CouncilDiscovery Project (DP120100270) The Political Ecology of ForestCarbon: Mainland Southeast Asia's New Commodity Frontiers? Therst author received logistical support during eldwork from theConsultancy on Development Institute (CODE) in Vietnam. The viewsexpressed here are those of the authors anddo not necessarily representthose of the funders.

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A new landlord (a ch mi)? Community, land conflict and State Forest Companies (SFCs) in Vietnam1. Introduction2. Theoretical context: land, markets and statesociety relations3. Field methods4. State Forest Companies and land conflict in the uplands4.1. The changing governance of State Forest Companies4.2. The conflict between Dong Bac Forest Company and Cot Coi village, Lang Son Province4.3. The conflict between Long Dai Forest Company and Khe Cat villagers, Quang Binh Province

5. Discussion and ConclusionsAcknowledgmentsReferences

A New Landlord

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