Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside is a 2020 non-fiction book by Xiaowei Wang, a Chinese-American artist, writer, and software engineer. The book explores the impact of technology on rural China, especially in relation to agriculture and food safety. It consists of several vignettes that illustrate how technology is used and adapted in rural China, both by individuals and by urban corporations, and how this impacts global society.
Over the course of the book, Wang travels across China to visit places such as a "blockchain chicken farm" where chickens are tracked by QR codes to certify their free range status, a pearl farming village that exports pearls to US-based multi-level marketing companies, and a Halloween costume factory run by the e-commerce giant Taobao based in a small town. Wang conducted their research over the late 2010s, motivated by the desire to address their own biases in favour of urban areas.
Blockchain Chicken Farm was published by FSG Originals x Logic, a collaboration between Farrar, Straus and Giroux and the technology magazine Logic. The book received widespread attention from critics following its release, being featured on several recommendations lists and awarded the National Book Foundation's 2023 Science + Literature prize. It was also commended for its nuance, detail, and unique perspective on technology and society. Though reception trended positive, some reviewers criticized the book for its lack of a clear thesis, its superficiality, or its misrepresentation of some concepts.
Background
China has rapidly industrialized since the mid to late twentieth century. One consequence is the emergence of substantial income inequality between China's urban and rural regions; inequality peaked in 2009, with a per capita income in urban areas thrice that of rural areas, and has since stabilized. A distinctive feature of Chinese internal migration is the hukou system, a form of household registration where people are assigned a "rural" or "urban" status based on the circumstances of their birth; the location of one's hukou determines eligibility for services such as schools, hospitals, pensions, housing, and employment in an area. Due to the difficulties in changing one's hukou, many migrants from rural to urban China lack access to such services in their place of residence. Though the hukou system has been reformed multiple times, it remains strict.
Food safety is a widespread concern in China, spurred by numerous high-profile controversies regarding contaminated or misrepresented food. To serve China's rapidly growing urban middle class, who increase the country's demand both for meat and for higher-quality food, farmers and companies have attempted technological solutions to guarantee their products' freshness and safety. This includes the eponymous "blockchain chicken farms", where chickens are tracked by QR code to certify their free range status and sold at a premium.
Xiaowei Wang is a Chinese-American artist, writer, and software engineer with a Ph.D. in geography from the University of California, Berkeley. Blockchain Chicken Farm is their first book. Wang was inspired to investigate technology in rural China as a critique of "metronormativity", a term defined by Jack Halberstam as a disproportionate focus on urban environments motivated by a stigma against rural cultures and societies.
Synopsis
Blockchain Chicken Farm focuses on the impact of technology in rural China, particularly as it relates to agriculture. The first major focus of the book is the "blockchain chicken farms" run by Bubuji (), also known as GoGoChicken, a subsidiary of the technology arm of ZhongAn, China's largest insurance company. Wang visits a farm in Guizhou owned by Jiang, a farmer who turned to GoGoChicken after sales for his free range chickens declined due to distrust of their provenance. In Wang's discussions with Jiang and Ren, a local government employee, they discover the people involved with the project have little understanding of what technology underpins it. Though the blockchain chickens are profitable, selling for up to (US$) to a market of upper-middle-class consumers, Jiang's enterprise sales dry up shortly after the first order, raising concerns about their long-term viability.