Where Will Technology and Rural Revitalization Lead Us? And what do Paris-tasting croissants in an isolated Chinese mountain village have to do with this ?
A third party account, and guest travelogue, about Michel Bauwens' visit to grassroots communities in Mainland China.
From the end of November to early December, I visited 6 cities in China, but also three ‘rural revitalization’ communities, respectively:
The Damoyu Ecovillage in Kunming
The 706 co-living community network in Chongqing
The SeeDAO community founders in Wuhan
Helena Rong and Anna Greenspan at NYU in Shanghai, and with Francesca Valsecchi and her research Lab at Tongji Uni, very deep scholars of China’s technological revolutions; I also visited the Dweller co-living and culture center there.
Three rural revitalization projects in Fujian and nearby provinces, organized by the National Rural Reconstruction Movement, notably Pignan. That last one is the encounter described in the article below. I also visited the Nantang agricultural coop with a rural DAO, and the ambitious plans of artist Tang Ganghua and team in Luishei province
.. and my trip ended with a visit to makerspaces and Web 3 communes in Shenzhen, including representatives of the Chinese Web5 movement (and a bookshop in Hong Kong).
(the list is incomplete due to my travel situation, I will update it later)
I have provided my readers previously here with two more analytical articles, but then you have been missing out on the rich human relationships that such an intense visit entails. While I may still write my own account, this is the next best thing!
In Pignan, I met an enthusiastic young man, ‘Flatulist’, whom I didn’t know would write an article, and had unguarded conversations with, while eating delicious Paris-tasting croissants in the middle of a Chinese farming village in an isolated mountain area. The article below has some interesting things to say about this ‘anomaly’. In turns out that the article he wrote is very lively, subjectivized and contextualized account of my trip by an independent ‘third party’. I think you will enjoy it as much as I did.
You may also enjoy my video conversation with a local artist, Tang Ganghua.
The original appeared here:
I did not reproduce part 2, also worth a read, you will find it here:
AND NOW, WIHTOUT FURTHER ADO:
Where Will Technology and Rural Revitalization Lead Us? 1 — A Tour of Pingnan with MICHEL BAUWENS
Cosmo-localism in Action: Pingnan’s Rural Innovation Journey
My Impromptu Trip to Pingnan
Flatulist:
This trip to Pingnan was entirely a random occurrence.
In fact, I had learned earlier from the Uncommons community that Michel Bauwens (hereafter referred to as MB) would be visiting China.
It so happened that I saw Michel Bauwens having a conversation with Tang Guanhua in Lishui, Zhejiang. Since I was in Wenzhou at the time, which didn’t seem far away, I wondered if I should go to the offline sharing event in person.
So I asked friends in the Uncommons community about the upcoming event schedule, only to find out that MB was no longer in Lishui and had already gone to Pingnan, Fujian.
After learning this news at 1 p.m. on the 19th, I checked and found that a ride-sharing trip there would only cost 120 yuan. I quickly went back to my accommodation, packed my luggage in a hurry, and drove to Siping Village, Pingnan, Fujian—their location—arriving at 9:30 p.m.
About Michel Bauwens
He is a theorist, author, consultant, and founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives.
He collaborates with researchers worldwide to explore peer-to-peer production, governance, and property rights. He also serves as Research Director at CommonsTransition.org, a platform dedicated to promoting the building of a commons-based society. Additionally, he is a founding member of the Commons Strategy Group, which he co-founded with Silke Helfrich and David Bollier to organize globally significant conferences on the commons and their economics. Bauwens has co-authored numerous books and reports, such as *Future Scenarios for the Network Society and the Collaborative Economy* (2014, with Vasilis Kostakis) and the recently published *P2P: The Commons Manifesto* (2019, with Vasilis Kostakis and Alex Pazaitis). His latest report, *P2P Accounting for Planetary Survival* (2019), explores the shared accounting systems needed for production within the Earth’s carrying capacity. He is currently developing a MOOC prototype on the sharing economy.
About Tang Guanhua
http://www.cscing.com/anotherland/about.html
He is the co-founder of the AnotherLand Project, director of the China Self-Sufficiency Laboratory, initiator of the Chi’an Consensus Community Experiment and the Southern Life Consensus Community Experiment, and founder of the United Reborn Project. He previously served as the Chinese National Representative of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and a director of the Zhengrong Public Welfare Foundation. Over the past 17 years, he has explored a self-sufficient and sustainable lifestyle in the mountains and forests across China, redefining and practicing the concept of “consensus communities” in the country. He is the author of *The Path to Independence*.
About Uncommons
It is a Chinese-language crypto-humanities community.
When I arrived, the person picking me up—codenamed 6-935—wasn’t answering their phone, which made me anxious. The village was pitch-black at night, and I had no idea where to find them, so I had to first drop off my luggage at a homestay.
Ten minutes later, I finally got in touch with them. When I arrived at the meeting place, I found a group of people gathered in a village bar, singing karaoke and chatting—that’s why they couldn’t hear the phone ring.
MB had gone back earlier since it was getting late, but by coincidence, I met Bai Yu and Tang Han, who were also engaged in rural development and Web3 work in Fujian.
Although 6-935 and Bai Yu had been online friends of mine for a long time, it was the first time we met in person.
I had never met Tang Han before, but I had been reading her articles. In my imagination, she might be a chubby woman with a nurturing, earth-mother-like vibe. Haha, in person, she came across as more of an “alt” style enthusiast. Learning that she would leave Fujian the next day, I, as a loyal reader, urged her to finish her next article.
About Tang Han and Bai Yu
https://seedao.xyz/
They are co-founders of SEEDAO.
## About 6-935
It is a mysterious code name within Uncommons.
I made an appointment with 6-935 to have breakfast with MB early the next morning.
The previous night, the village was so dark that I couldn’t see what it looked like at all. However, after sunrise the next day, I found that the small mountain village of Siping was truly beautiful.
*Blue sky~~~~ Clear lake water~~~~ Ah~~~~*
Paris in Pingnan
The early morning Siping Village was completely different from what I had imagined a rural village to be.
As the sun just climbed over the mountain, the lake surface shimmered like a newly spread cloth, with a brightness that felt far from “rustic”.
I walked along the only road in the village that could barely be called a “main road”, and the air was a mix of the smell of earth and the aroma of baked bread.
The breakfast spot was a French bakery.
When you hear the term “French bakery” in a location like Siping Village, Pingnan, Fujian,
your first reaction is definitely:
——This must be a lie.
But the moment you push open the door, you have to admit:
The croissants here are more authentic than those you can find in Shanghai or Hangzhou.
MB took a bite and blurted out:
“Paris in Pingnan.”
Truly a classic comment from someone who knows Paris well.
A reality more comedic than theory:
A scholar who has long talked about “cosmo-localism”
found a concrete embodiment of his theory in a village so small you can barely find it on a map.
During breakfast, I asked MB a question:
“As AI develops faster and faster, Geoffrey Hinton suggests that young people in the future should become plumbers. What do you think of this phenomenon?”
Chewing on his croissant, he said:
“If I hadn’t been born in Europe during that era, I might now be living under a bridge.”
He also joked that his wife couldn’t understand why someone would pay him to give lectures around the world.
I replied that no matter how smart or powerful a man is, he still can’t avoid being “henpecked” when he gets home.
He then added:
“If he had his way, he would bring education back to the real world—
teaching people to build houses, cook, and create things,
because these skills will still be irreplaceable in the future.”
This scholar, who speaks globally about P2P, digital commons, and collaborative governance, told me:
The most important skills in the future will be building houses and cooking.
I’m not sure if this is a satire of reality, or if reality is satirizing us.
But his point was simple—
The more cyberized the future becomes, the more we need local, practical skills to stabilize the system.
Otherwise, you will be left further and further behind by algorithms and technology.
This small village in Pingnan perfectly serves as a real-life backdrop for his viewpoint:
There are young people returning to their hometowns,
global flavors,
technology transfer,
real construction efforts,
the rudiments of community governance,
local resilience,
and connections to the wider world.
And all of these are happening simultaneously beside a French croissant.
This is the true punchline of “Paris in Pingnan”:
It’s not that the countryside has become “fancy”,
but that the world has become more “implementable”.
The story behind this French bakery also holds many interesting tales.
This vivid real-life case aligns perfectly with the cosmo-localism described by MB.
“In Hangzhou, I only have work.
Here, besides work, I also have a life.”
This statement is a truth that all white-collar workers in cities have repeated to themselves hundreds of times, yet never truly acted on.
And this sentence precisely constitutes the real-world version of “cosmo-localism”:
It is not about cultural export, nor about rural novelty-seeking,
but rather: Local Living × Global Knowledge × Flexible Mobility.
A person bringing the taste of Paris to Pingnan,
is not because Pingnan “needs” France,
but because he himself knows how to build the good life he desires.
These young people who return to their hometowns or settle in rural areas are the “high-quality talents” driving the new type of rural revitalization:
They have skills,
a global perspective,
a taste for life,
and an understanding of where competition lies and where innovation emerges.
The state has laid down the infrastructure for rural revitalization—transportation, communications, electricity, and digital services.
Thus, young people like Xiaoran can naturally “move” to the countryside, not out of forced migration, but out of active choice.
This is the most important aspect of cosmo-localism:
Good things no longer belong exclusively to a certain place. They flow globally, but once rooted locally, they become part of local life.
This is not cultural imperialism.
It is the distributed spread of life capabilities.
As MB put it:
“Heavy localization, light globalization.”
Croissants represent “light” knowledge;
Ovens, dough, labor, and life represent “heavy” local elements;
This bakery is a small node of cosmo-localism.
A Real-Life “Community Ecosystem”
After breakfast, we took a casual walk around the village.
Siping Village is small, but perfectly so.
You can walk through its main streets in ten minutes, and also stumble upon a “future in experimentation” within the same ten minutes.
For example:
- A coffee shop opened by a young person who returned to their hometown
- A handicraft workshop
- Homestays
- An offline workstation for a rural development DAO
- A social innovation camp of the China Academy of Art
- The Guoren Rural Development Base of Wen Tiejun’s team
This combination seems like:
A cross-collaboration between the “Marvel Universe of Rural Revitalization” and a “Grassroots Web3 Alliance”.
When you look up, you’ll see clothes hanging out to dry and elderly women sitting at their doorsteps sorting vegetables.
Looking a little further, you’ll find an architect team discussing “localized construction”.
I also sat in on a sharing session at a postgraduate and doctoral camp focused on social innovation at the China Academy of Art.
You could clearly sense that:
Local government officials,
design teams,
social innovation organizations,
young people returning to their hometowns,
rural development DAOs,
and academic practitioners
were all gathered in this valley,
trying to “align” with one another.
In a city, this kind of scene would merely exist as a collage of PPT slides;
But in Siping Village, it has been compressed into reality:
There are bricks and tiles,
land,
real construction projects,
governance measures to be implemented,
and specific life problems to be solved.
This is what MB refers to as the “frontline battlefield of regenerative production”.
If you only read academic papers, cosmo-localism might sound like a utopia;
But if you stand in Siping Village, you will understand:
It is not a concept, but a physical reality that is already taking shape.
What’s more, it is happening faster in rural areas than in cities—because cities are too expensive, rigid, crowded, and slow.
The volume of capital is too large, so the space for experimentation is naturally compressed.
Rural areas, on the other hand, are like external “cache areas”:
They have space, patience, opportunities, and room for trial and error.
Here, theories are no longer just concepts;
They transform into:
A homestay,
a coffee shop,
a field,
an ancient residential building under restoration,
a public discussion,
a group of young people from across the country sitting together drinking tea.
Perhaps the truest form of cosmo-localism is this:
In rural areas, theories cease to be theoretical.
A Visit to Xiadi Village: When “Ancient Village Restoration” Is No Longer Just a Conceptual Romance
After lunch, we visited another typical example nearby: Xiadi Village.
The person who showed us around was Xiaoyi, the manager of Senke Xiadi Homestay.
The story of Xiadi she told was more like a “cultural realism script” than I had imagined.
The key figure in this whole story is Professor Cheng Meixin.
In 2015, he and his entire family gave up their life in the big city and quietly moved to Xiadi Village, deep in the mountains of Pingnan. He led his team in the emergency restoration of the ancient residential buildings here. Among the most famous restoration projects are the ancient Xiadi Village and the Xue Mansion in Shuangxi. In addition, he also participated in the renovation of other ancient villages, restoring more than 150 old houses in total.
*Image: Comparison of the Xue Mansion’s main hall before and after renovation*
So why did Professor Cheng make this decision?
He believes that Xiadi Ancient Village is a classic village with the characteristics of the mountainous areas in northeastern Fujian. It possesses a unique charm of simplicity and elegance, nature and humanity, vitality and solemnity. Traditional villages in eastern Fujian with well-preserved layouts are already rare in China. However, like most villages, it faces the dilemma of being left empty and falling into ruin. If no action is taken, it will soon disappear.
At the same time, he naturally came up with an idea—to bring art to this ancient village. He wanted to try a different lifestyle and, through his own efforts, advocate for and protect China’s traditional ancient villages. Understanding and activating the value of ancient villages is an extremely important task, and this is a cultural issue. Therefore, he decided to stay.
## Extended Reading on Professor Cheng and Xiadi Village
- https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/6AlMmCX2GfMKTJfm7tlx_w
- https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/MlKvaliAI0YPTeFF0qrKuA
He didn’t do this because he wanted to “return to nature”,
nor to become an internet celebrity by making short videos.
His motivation was simple, straightforward, and even a little stubborn:
“If we don’t repair these old houses now, they will be gone forever.”
From his experience, you can see a simple sense of value:
When people leave,
the village withers,
the houses collapse,
history is broken,
and beauty ceases to exist.
He just thought this was a pity, so he took action.
As a result, over ten years, more than 150 old houses in this village have been restored.
It sounds like a documentary plot, but in fact, it is just an ordinary person doing something extraordinarily steadily.
And this precisely explains a key point of cosmo-localism that many people overlook:
“A local actor” is not equivalent to “a local person”;
They can also be outsiders who choose to take root.
They bring skills, aesthetics, funds, and methodologies with them,
introduce a complete set of “global experiences” to a place,
and then through localization, transform them into another form of “local capability”.
In essence, this is a form of social infrastructure construction:
Restoring cultural heritage,
reconstructing the community economy,
improving the living environment,
enhancing local resilience,
upgrading the quality of life,
and establishing a foundation for the future.
To put it plainly:
Pulling a village that is on the verge of “dying” out of the “ICU” and back into a sustainable life cycle.
MB’s Formal Sharing: New-Type Communities and the Sharing Economy
The audience included young people returning to their hometowns, rural development teams, friends from the Web3 sector, and casual listeners who happened to be passing by. Everyone came from different fields of inquiry, yet unexpectedly, in this small village, they exchanged ideas about the same framework for the future of civilization.
MB’s content can basically be summarized in a linear logic:
The commons were initially physical: forests, water sources, pastures.
Later, they were privatized by capitalism.
The working class of the industrial age then created a second type of commons: social communities.
But social communities were eventually nationalized by the state welfare system.
The commons completely disappeared from daily life in the West.
It wasn’t until the emergence of the Internet that digital commons ushered in a third revival.
It still sounds like the same old saying:
The Internet is the new commons, but precisely because of this, it also faces the risk of being swallowed up by platforms.
After MB finished his talk, it was time for questions, and I asked him two questions.
Question 1: Have digital platforms already prematurely realized “Planned Economy 2.0”?
I brought up the example of Salvador Allende in Chile that he had mentioned earlier.
Many years ago, the Chilean government wanted to create a cyberized collaborative system to achieve distribution and regulation similar to a planned economy. However, due to historical and political reasons, this effort ultimately failed.
But today, platforms like Meituan, Didi, and the food delivery rider system—
These platforms, which feature “large-scale labor intensity + high-level dataization + real-time dispatch”, have actually achieved what Allende wanted to do back then.
The only difference is their motives, which are completely opposite.
Allende wanted to do it to avoid resource waste and make collaboration smoother. (Of course, he also had his political aspirations.)
Now, it is done to maximize efficiency, achieve monopoly, exploit labor, and exercise algorithmic control.
I asked MB:
“So how should we face this extreme structure of digital power?”
He thought for a moment and gave a very unromantic answer:
“Do it all over again.
Rebuild such a collaborative system using open-source data and open-source code.”
The implementation sounds not so easy, but the logic is simple and straightforward:
If you can’t beat it, compete with it using a better system.
Modern people don’t take sides based on idealism;
They vote with their experience.
“If an open-source, shared, and non-exploitative platform can provide the same level of convenience,
people will naturally migrate to it.”
He spoke casually, but I understood the implication of his words:
The competition of the future will not be between platforms, but between governance logics.
Question 2: If the resources of the commons are limited, how should we deal with internal competition (involution) among organizations?
I asked him:
In reality, among various sub-projects under a single foundation,
even though all of them are doing things that benefit society, they still compete with each other for more resources,
and even curry favor with the centers of power.
This clearly contradicts the cooperative logic of an “idealistic ecosystem”.
His answer didn’t beat around the bush either:
“Competition is inevitable.
But the organization that ultimately wins will not be the one with the strongest individual capabilities,
but the one with the highest level of internal cooperation.”
He emphasized “cohesion” and “coordination”.
It sounds simple, but in fact, it speaks to an underlying law:
Resources flow to organizations with healthier structures, not the ones that make the most noise.
Teams with stronger internal collaboration are more likely to amplify their influence within the commons network.
Eventually, a form of “cooperative competition” will take shape:
Competition exists, but victory is achieved through cooperation
The Third Unasked Question
In fact, there was a third question I didn’t ask in the end, but I want to share it here for everyone to think about and discuss together.
I originally wanted to ask: Could there be some vested interest groups who are also your loyal readers, but who act in the opposite way—twisting your ideas to serve their own purposes?
By conducting in-depth research on your viewpoints and advocacy for action, they then counter and resist you.
Just as some scholars have said:
The way Silicon Valley elites understand Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault is inverted.
They take ideas that critique the system and use them to upgrade the system, rather than to dismantle it.
As the academic community also believes that Peter Thiel’s thoughts are an inverted application of the ideas of Carl Schmitt.
Facing these powerful and intelligent people who also deeply study and understand your ideas and works, how should we respond?
Yixian fried rice, ready-made meals, Peter Thiel, the two sides of Namibia—
If certain capital forces are particularly interested in MB’s theories...
Could they also use cosmo-localism to do the exact opposite?
For example:
Using the “commons” as a disguise for monopoly,
using “local autonomy” to enclose local resources,
using “collaborative networks” to create a higher level of exclusivity.
In other words:
What if the “bad guys” study theories harder than the “good guys”?
I didn’t ask this question.
Not because I was afraid to, but because I vaguely felt that there would be no simple answer to it.
That night, Siping Village was extraordinarily quiet.
In the distance, you could hear the barking of dogs and the sound of wind blowing through the valley.
I suddenly realized,
This question may require our generation to answer it ourselves.
— A Small-Scale World Model in Pingnan
After the sharing session ended, the crowd dispersed, and Siping Village suddenly became quiet.
The night wind blew through the valley, carrying a dampness and a faint earthy smell. I had absorbed so much information during the day that my mind felt like it was running on multiple threads, mapping terms like “commons”, “collaboration”, and “cosmo-localism” back and forth onto this extremely concrete village of Pingnan.
Perhaps it was precisely because of this that this impromptu trip felt like a puzzle piece—
Fitting all the scattered thoughts I had over the past few years back into a specific real-life scenario.
Looking at the village during the day and listening to the talk at night:
You see young people returning to their hometowns sunbathing in the village, craftsmen who have left the big cities rediscovering their lives, the Guoren team engaged in many constructive works in the village, and MB holding a cup of coffee, slowly talking about those theories regarding the structure of civilization.
Pingnan is not a utopia, nor is it a template that solves all problems.
But it at least proves one thing:
As long as those theories about the future are applied to specific people, they can become tangible realities.
For example, Xiaoran, who used to make French croissants in Hangzhou, came to open a shop in these mountains. MB sat here having breakfast and said, “Paris in Pingnan.”
This sentence is actually the simplest explanation of cosmo-localism:
Good things from outside are absorbed locally, making life a little better.
Another example is Professor Cheng Meixin, who left the city and moved to Xiadi Village. Over more than a decade, he has restored over 150 old houses. He wasn’t “following some grand narrative”; he just thought—if we don’t act now, the village will be gone.
Or the friends around me, like 6-935, Bai Yu, and Tang Han, each engaged in their own rural development, DAO, and community experiments. They aren’t trying to “redesign the world”; they’re just giving a little push forward.
These small actions, small persistences, and small experiments seem insignificant, but together they form a kind of “precursor signal of a micro-civilization”.
Systemic change has never been achieved overnight.
It all starts with such quiet, unassuming small things.
And Pingnan, by coincidence, is a place where the density of such “small things” is particularly high.
Thus, this trip, which was completely random, gave me a very strange feeling:
You suddenly realize that to see “what the future looks like”, you don’t necessarily need to chase trends in big cities.
Sometimes, it instead takes shape in the most unexpected places,
like a small mountain village in northern Fujian.
People understand the world through specific places.
That night, amid the sound of the wind in Siping Village, I felt like I had just installed a new “world model”.
It’s not grand, nor is it abstract;
It’s a quiet, yet complete logic:
The future won’t collapse, nor will it arrive suddenly.
The future is built bit by bit.
And these bits and pieces are precisely taking place in Pingnan right now.
Conclusion: Making the World Habitable Again
On the day I left Pingnan, I suddenly realized that this trip didn’t give me “inspiration” or “nostalgia”; instead, it gave me a new “worldview patch”.
A patch that allows you to face the future without feeling so pessimistic, angry, or powerless.
You will begin to understand those who are working hard to repair, build, and reconnect—whether they are making bread, restoring ancient houses, writing code, or building communities—they are all, in their own ways, pushing for the same thing:
Making the world habitable again.
Read More
### Cosmo-localism
Michel Bauwens has explained the concept of “cosmo-localism” in detail, whose core is “heavy things localized, light things globalized”:
#### Basic Concepts
- **Localization of “heavy” resources**: Physical production (such as food, housing, manufacturing) should be carried out as close to the place of demand as possible to reduce transportation consumption (which can save approximately 75% of materials and energy).
- **Globalization of “light” resources**: Non-physical resources such as knowledge, designs, and code should be shared globally (e.g., open-source software, permaculture knowledge) to enable low-cost collaboration through digital technology.
#### Purpose
To solve the problem of resource waste in the current industrial system and achieve “economies of scope” (doing more with fewer resources), rather than relying on “economies of scale” (large-scale production reduces costs but intensifies exploitation).
#### Illustrative Examples
- **Cooperative models**: Such as cooperative housing (reducing costs by 40%), community-supported agriculture (fixed agreements between consumers and producers), and shared maker spaces.
- **Distributed manufacturing**: For example, the “Arrival” project simplified the car manufacturing process from 750 steps to 50 steps, enabling on-demand local production combined with the concept of a circular economy.
- **Application in ecovillages**: Connecting local practices with global knowledge (e.g., mutual assistance among 12,000 permaculture projects worldwide).
#### Differences from Old Ideologies
Cosmo-localism is based on the “commons”, rather than the anarchism or communism of the industrial era. It emphasizes new forms of collaboration in the digital age, achieving cross-regional coordination through peer-to-peer networks while maintaining the necessity of physical local organizations.
#### Significance
Against the backdrop of the climate crisis and resource limitations, cosmo-localism is crucial for the transition to a regenerative society. It emphasizes care, regeneration, and the reconstruction of value systems (e.g., incorporating care work into core values, rather than treating it merely as a cost).
Loved how this travelogue flips the script on what 'innovation hubs' actually look like. The detail about Professor Cheng spending a decade restoring 150 old houses really gets at something important: cosmo-localism isn't just theory on slides, it's bricks and croissants and someone deciding a villlage matters more than career ladders. I used to think these rural experiments were kinda romanticized, but the part about competition within commons-based organizatoins was refreshingly honest. The real test isn't whether Pingnan can produce good bread but whether these micro-nodes can resist getting swallowed by platform capital once scale kicks in.
This article comes at the perfect time. Thank you for such an insightful piece. Its so important to focus on the human element amidst all the tech talk. That detail about the croissants perfectly illustrates the global connections you explored. A really smart perspective.