Yale Environment 360: In the 1960s, when Zhou Fabei moved to Xishuangbanna prefecture, a tropical corner of southwest Chinas Yunnan province, he quickly landed a job building roads for new rubber plantations. The timing of his move from the populous central province of Hunan couldnt have been better for him: Chinas post-revolutionary government had just started slashing forests and promoting rubber cultivation by state-run firms. By the 1980s, the government was offering incentives to the prefectures poor farmers...