Cai, Xuexin (EALAC-Hist)

Xuexin Cai is a PhD candidate in the History-East Asia Program, working at the intersection of environmental humanities, borderlands studies, and the history of science and technology. While his current research focuses on Yunnan, in Southwest China, he is also interested in the broader Sino-Southeast Asian and Sino-Tibetan borderlands.

His dissertation, titled “Between Wasteland and Wilderness: Rubber, Nature, and the Making of Tropical China, 1945-2000,” explores the socio-environmental history of Xishuangbanna (Sipsongpanna), which sits at the intersection of China, Laos, and Burma, and is one of the world’s most biologically and culturally diverse regions. With an interdisciplinary approach informed by archival research, ethnographic fieldwork, and critical use of scientific studies and digital geospatial mapping, his dissertation traces two intertwined historical processes in the half-century following the end of WWII: the biophysical, socioeconomic, and discursive transformation of southern Yunnan (particularly Xishuangbanna) from a remote borderland into the center of China’s tropical sciences and agriculture, and China’s transformation into a state with a serious commitment to environmentally sustainable development. Focusing on China’s coterminous establishment of rubber farms and nature reserves, this project explores questions that are key to understanding the environmental changes and the lived experience of millions of people in southern Yunnan and beyond, from the Maoist to the Reform periods.

Experiences before coming to Columbia have shaped Xuexin’s current research interests. During his undergraduate years at New York University Abu Dhabi, he studied the history of the tea trade between communities in Southwest China and those on the Tibetan Plateau. Upon graduation, he went to Yunnan and spent three years there, working first in the public humanities and then at a village primary school not far from the China-Burma border. The people and places that he became familiar with during those years continue to be an important source of inspiration for his current research.