Following the Anti-Localism Campaigns of the 1950s, Hainan’s political and economic development seemed to be headed for another frustrating disappointment, with the new mainland regime failing to develop the significant strategic and agricultural potential of the island. With the nationwide economic disasters of high Maoism, in the late 1950s and through the first years of the following decade, Hainan’s lack of development was no exception in China, where one of the greatest man-made famines following the disastrous Great Leap Forward policies took years of recovery. In the early 1960s, while relative political and economic moderation prevailed throughout most of the country and led to recovery, on Hainan, the Anti-Localism Campaigns were impossible to reverse for Feng Baiju. Feng had been exiled first to Guangzhou (Canton), and later to Zhejiang.
In 1962 Feng spoke openly at a Party meeting about the duplicity and character assassination by Zhao Ziyang, Tao Zhu, and Ou Mengjue, but this speech indicated limits of his freedom. He was not allowed to serve on his home island, but remained in Zhejiang, where he successfully managed a schistosomiasis outbreak. As a result of this and other local governing successes, Feng became a popular figure in the province even though he could not speak the local dialect. By 1973, Feng’s chronic illnesses overcame him, and he passed away in Beijing. He had been summoned to the capital for treatment when he became gravely ill. According to several accounts, this transfer was on Zhou Enlai’s orders, and his family was also brought to Beijing to be by his side. His eldest daughter told me that she brought his favorite snack of dried shrimp to cheer him. In the Cultural Revolution, Hainan’s Communist history was patronizingly essentialized in the model dramatic ballet, Red Detachment of Women (Hongse niangzi jun), with intentional manipulations of the actual female unit’s history, including a fictitious male character who was born on the mainland. In conversations with nearly anyone outside of Hainan, a discussion of Hainan’s revolutionary history invariably seems to lead toward whether I am an expert on this high-flying fable, which has eclipsed all other narratives including an accurate retelling of the women fighters themselves. In an upcoming study, I hope to address the history and mythology of the unit and the prejudice of mainland depictions that are evident in the hugely popular ballet, which has seen a recent revival touring elite stages around the world.
Following Mao’s death and the economic opening of China in the early 1980s, there was a revived campaign for Hainan’s elevation to provincial status. This effort was marred by a corruption scandal in which officials allocated funds marked for developing Hainan’s import economy and transportation infrastructure as a Special Economic Zone. In the “Hainan Car Incident” of 1984–1985, many Hainan officials were approved to use government funds to purchase more vehicles than the island had imported in the past thirty-five years, including vans, which some of the officials then promptly tried to sell for their own profit rather than use in their work units. Other officials, however, hoped to simply use the authorization to bring in the vehicles as an opportunity to enrich their local work units or towns, and did not consider the relatively large shipments of vehicles to be incongruent with general plans for economic development and opening.1 Ultimately, this conflict between local ambition and national control was resolved with the dismissal of the officials in charge of the operation, and it was only a bump in the road to Hainan’s eventual ascension to provincial status in 1988.
The 1990s saw a real estate bubble in Hainan grow and burst by the end of the decade. Hotels and high-rises sprouted across the island, especially in the southern resort of Sanya. Some of them stood empty or incomplete when the tourists and pensioners did not follow the ambitious developments. In the early twenty-first century, as the unflagging growth of the Chinese economy caught up with the dreams of the developers of Hainan, the real estate market stabilized and again began growing with an increase in retirement communities, golf courses, and luxury hotels.
Today, Hainan’s importance for Beijing and the region has changed from the early and mid-twentieth-century agricultural plans for the island to become a new breadbasket of China. Most importantly, efforts by both the provincial and national government have begun to shape the island into a major tourist destination for both Chinese and international visitors. Another factor that puts Hainan in recent headlines is its proximity to maritime disputes in the South China Sea, mainly with Vietnam and the Philippines, but also involving Malaysia, Brunei, and other countries.
With these new priorities for Hainan—as an international vacation destination and as a maritime border region—the plans for the island to become a new Taiwan or Singapore, or a breadbasket, have faded. New plans, unlike the ambitious development plans of the past, are built more realistically on Hainan’s past. As a maritime border area, unavoidable geography puts Hainan in a position to monitor and police the South China Sea and its potential wealth of energy resources.2 Historical claims to many islands throughout the South China Sea and a massive maritime region actually make Hainan (otherwise the country’s smallest province) the largest province in the People’s Republic of China, if we accept Beijing’s maritime borders, which put nearly the entire sea under Hainan’s jurisdiction. Speculation about natural resources under the water make Hainan a global flashpoint, and even Hainanese fishermen can become national celebrities if they bump into a patrolling Japanese coast guard vessel, as was the case in the fall of 2010.3
The detention of this fishing captain by the Japanese led to broader implications for Japan and China in the form of a temporary suspension of rare earth mineral shipments (essential to many high-technology devices) from Japan to China. Beyond regional maritime boundary disputes, the importance of regional waters as major shipping lanes has even led the Chinese foreign ministry to warn the United States about “playing with fire” when the United States declared its national interests in the sea.4 The Chinese patrols of the region are based out of naval headquarters in Hainan, and if the rhetoric of all parties involved can be trusted, the importance of these conflicting maritime claims cannot be overestimated.
As a tourist destination, Hainan is like some Southeast Asian countries and Pacific or Caribbean Islands, in that its undeveloped economy and infrastructure is hardly an obstacle to decadent vacationers; on the contrary, for some well-heeled visitors, this relative poverty can serve to add rich enjoyment to the experience of the island’s quaint, exotic, and seemingly timeless charm. Some regions of the island have been highly developed for wealthy visitors, from golf resorts that sprawl green across the island’s hills, to the resort city of Sanya, and the major political conference center of Bo’ao.5 Other regions are on display as authentic ethnic communities, where the local people dance for tourists and perform rituals in traditional costume. This “ethnic tourism” is a significant draw for Hainan, as are the beaches, golf resorts, and luxury hotels.6 The glitz of international beauty contests and sporting events has also served to attract the kind of attention that local and national developers of the island hope will translate into major tourist revenue. In the spring of 2011 and again in the winter of 2015–2016, Hainan’s provincial government launched a further attempt to draw wealthy travelers with a tax rebate program that allowed foreign and domestic tourists to the island to regain approximately 30 percent of the price of luxury goods that they purchased during their stay.7
The past forty years in China have revealed that major shifts in direction can take place in a very short time. Hainan’s economy seems poised to continue to benefit from tourist revenue and favorable government policy. Certainly, the island’s popularity with domestic tourism continues to rise as the number of middle class Chinese who can afford a vacation there continues to grow. Sustainable tiers of authority and autonomy are based on the stable point in the power negotiation among the different levels. Hainan’s position as watchtower of the South China Sea and major tourist destination seem to have provided that stasis.