Cultivating China’s Cinchona: The Local Developmental State, Global Botanic Networks and Cinchona Cultivation in Yunnan, 1930s–1940s

Summary This article reconstructs the history of China’s first successful cinchona cultivation programme in Hekou, Yunnan province from the 1930s to 1940s during the Nationalist era (1928–49). I argue that the Hekou programme was initiated by the Yunnan ‘local developmental state’ to control endemic malaria and achieve quinine self-sufficiency. It was expanded during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) as part of the national defence project in order to develop Yunnan’s malaria-ridden southwest frontier to provide more resources for the war, as well as to solve broader wartime epidemic crises in southwest China. A closer examination also indicates that the development of the Hekou programme was closely intertwined with global networks of cinchona cultivation and international politics.