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This essay outlines the symbolic and material transformation of mountain agriculture in Taiwan by tracing the historical trajectories of temperate fruit production, and of apple growing in particular. Specifically, we look at the area of Lishan, a major production centre for apples and other temperate fruits in Taiwan's Central Mountain Range in order to explore the relationship between the mountain agriculture and the politics of territorialisation. Focusing on the post‐war era, we argue that the development of mountain agriculture in Taiwan, and upland fruit growing in particular, has operated as a 'more‐than‐human political technology'. The territory of Lishan is not just a passive geographical space, but engaged in a process of becoming, which re‐makes the mountain areas of Taiwan into 'apple zones' both spatially and socially. The spatial dimension centres on processes of political territorialisation, economic deterritorialisation and combined reterritorialisations whereby apple plantations have transformed the landscape from one focused on strategic politics to one embedded within development and market frameworks which entail their own particular forms of politics. The social dimensions are centred on the politics of forging connections among different elements circulating through the mountain areas of Taiwan, including apples, soldiers, transport infrastructures and agricultural policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that frontiers are dilemmas composed of multiple dualities, be they exclusive and inclusive powers, connected space and national periphery, or modernity and primitiveness. These dilemmas, in consequence, become the mechanism to create a leeway for the state to 'tailor' different meanings of frontier to meet the contingent market demands. I use tea production on China's southwest frontier as an example to demonstrate that dilemma is not an end result, but a mechanism to rearticulate the relationship among frontier, the state and the market economy. Specifically, I argue that dilemmas on China's southwest frontier have been forged by the Chinese state with its incompatible desires between 'modernisation' and 'primitiveness' of the tea landscapes in Yunnan, a province on China's southwest frontier. Meanwhile, the incompatible desires and the resulting dilemmas on China's southwest frontier have further mobilised the state to flexibly rework its power to reconstruct the frontier to meet contingent market demand. Based on the shifting meanings of tea landscapes, the state has flexibly 'shuttled through' the dilemmas between development of modernisation and preservation of primitiveness on the frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]