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Mongol logging from 1707 at the request of the Baarin and Ongni’ud
banners. Objections from the nearby Kheshigten Banner, whose“liveli-
hood depended on these trees,”persuaded the dynasty to divide the
timber between the three banners.^120
Selective enforcement of timber prohibition proved unsustainable in
many of these cases. Muna, for example, was subjected to ongoing illicit
timbering with official connivance from authorities in Shanxi. By
1759 the Qianlong emperor acknowledged that merchant cutting taxed
by the state for the benefit of locals was preferable to unenforceable
prohibition that resulted only in smuggling. Relying primarily on private
interests, however, was a questionable method that had already failed in
1733 in the Daqing region, where smuggling to avoid taxes was rife.
Moreover, by 1760 more than three hundred households of more than
one thousand Han cultivators were belatedly discovered by officials to
have cleared thirty thousandqing(about two hundred thousand hectares)
infifteen Daqing valleys. A 1761 proposal to tax these cultivators, and
remit some of the revenue to Mongols, echoes the throne’s 1759 pragma-
tism. Timber resources were further compromised in the wake of massive
state construction projects. Suiyuan was built in 1739 and Beijing’s
Yuanming Yuan and Chengde’s Potala Temple (Putuozongcheng miao)
between 1768 and 1774 , although expanded urbanization at Han-
Mongol trade centers such as Dolon Nuur was also becoming a factor
around 1761.^121
Such mid-Qianlong operations were probably the beginning of author-
ized large-scale deforestation in Inner Mongolia. Significant merchant
cutting, the bulk of which was probably illegal and therefore incalculable,
predated state logging by aroundfifty years. Although there were cer-
tainly Mongols involved, the main demand for this wood, including that
cut by banners for profit between 1707 and 1717 , came from China
proper. Even ostensibly Mongolian projects at Suiyuan and Chengde
were explicitly intended to maintain an imperial borderland for the
security and prosperity of those resident south of the Great Wall.
A north-south conflict of interest could manifest itself within official-
dom, whose administrative interests were in part determined by environ-
mental relations between their respective populations and resources.
A sixteen-year deliberation between Inner Mongolian, Zhili, and Beijing
officials over access to alkali deposits in and aroundfive lakes in the
Pastoral Chakhar cattle and sheep pastures reveals complicated interde-
pendencies that did not conform to administrative, or even species,
boundaries.
The Nature of Imperial Pastoralism in Southern Inner Mongolia 153
