This article is compiled based on the presentation delivered at the forum China’s Urbanization Pathways Under the Dual Carbon Goals: Cutting-Edge Reflections, one of the series of forums marking the 15th Anniversary of the PKU-Lincoln Center on November 5, 2022, and has been reviewed by Professor Liu Shouying.
Speaker Profile
Liu Shouying, Party Secretary and Dean, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor of the School of Economics, Renmin University of China; Yangtze River Distinguished Professor of the Ministry of Education. His research focuses on land institutions and economic development, industrial transformation and upgrading of manufacturing sectors.
Abstract
China’s rural areas are currently trapped by dilemmas revolving around four core dimensions: population, industry, housing and land. It is urgent to forge a new type of urban-rural relationship, shifting from one-way urbanization to coordinated progress of urbanization and rural construction, build integrated urban-rural zones centered on metropolitan areas, and deepen reform of rural factor allocation with land as the core leverage. To advance rural revitalization, four pathways should be pursued: lift land productivity per unit area to restructure and upgrade agricultural production factors; restructure rural land allocation centering on the three-rights separation reform of farmland, reallocation of collective construction land and homestead reform; attract returning high-end talents to fuel rural revitalization; and reshape new forms of villages by optimizing village landscapes, spatial scope, functions, public services, elderly care systems and rural cultural inheritance.
The Report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China laid out the strategic arrangement to pursue carbon peaking and carbon neutrality in an active and prudent manner. Multiple bottlenecks in China’s agricultural and rural development hinder the delivery of dual carbon targets. China’s application rate of chemical fertilizer reaches 506.11 kilograms per hectare and pesticide use hits 10.3 kilograms per hectare, far exceeding global average levels. Coal accounts for approximately 55% of total rural energy consumption. Loose coal burning in rural areas constitutes a major source of air pollution and haze. Improper disposal of rural biomass generates severe air pollution: roughly 800 million tons of crop straw are produced annually nationwide, much of which is burned in open fields. Solid waste and garbage lack efficient resource recovery channels. Around 100 million tons of rural waste including domestic trash and livestock manure are generated each year, leading to massive energy waste and ecological degradation. Therefore, fulfilling the dual carbon strategy requires fundamental transformation of agricultural development models and rural spatial forms, together with vigorous advancement of urban-rural integration and rural revitalization.
I. Dilemmas Facing Rural Areas Under the Urban-Rural Dual Structure
The current predicament of China’s countryside stems from functional imbalance and fading vitality of rural systems amid profound historical transformation, manifested across four dimensions: population, industry, housing and land.
Intergenerational population disparities: The first generation of farmers is aging rapidly amid nationwide population aging, facing challenges of secure and dignified old-age livelihoods. The second generation of farmers continues the trend of leaving rural homelands for cities without permanent rural return, yet incomplete urbanization leaves them with uncertain long-term settlement prospects. The third generation of farmers actively migrates to cities, but a large share refuses to register permanent urban household status (Figure 1), depriving them of equal access to urban public services and social welfare.
Figure 1 Gap Between Two Urbanization Rates in China
Declining rural industries as root cause of rural decay: Rural areas face immense barriers to diversified industrial development and witness an increasingly singular industrial structure. Agricultural production yields extremely low returns (Figure 2); larger operational scales and higher input volumes often translate into greater losses. Constrained by the urban-rural dual system, high-quality urban production factors cannot freely flow into rural regions, resulting in insufficient exogenous driving forces for rural industrial growth.
Figure 2 Continuous Decline in Agricultural Production Returns
Urgent demand for fundamental improvement of rural housing conditions: Lack of planning guidance for rural land use, coupled with rural hollowing-out driven by mass rural-to-urban migration, leads to extremely low utilization rates of rural residential buildings. Institutional barriers to homestead circulation prevent rural housing from exerting property asset functions. Disparities in housing wealth accumulation constitute the primary source of the urban-rural wealth gap.
Inefficient rural land utilization: As second and third-generation farmers migrate to cities, cultivated land is mostly managed by elderly residents with weak agricultural capacity. Large-scale agricultural operators also struggle to turn profits. Excessive land occupation for residential construction, increasingly extravagant ancestral burial plots and disorderly homestead use create land shortages for rural development, leaving no available space for emerging industries.
II. Re-examining Urban-Rural Spatial Patterns
As the world’s most economically advanced nation, the United States offers valuable reference for China’s urban-rural development patterns. Population migration has spawned counter-urbanization: central cities experience net population outflow while suburban areas record net inflows. Income gaps between central urban districts and suburbs have reversed, with the most affluent suburban areas boasting higher per capita income than top-tier central city zones (Figure 3). Rural economies feature diversified industrial composition (Table 1).
Figure 3 Net Population Inflow in U.S. Metropolitan Core Areas and Suburbs, 1985–2020
Table 1 Major Typologies of Non-Metropolitan Counties in the United States, 1974–2015
| Category | 1974 | 1989 | 2004 | 2015 |
|---|
| Agriculture-dependent | 29.31% | 24.43% | 19.64% | 19.79% |
| Manufacturing-dependent | 25.42% | 22.23% | 28.51% | 17.61% |
| Mining-dependent | 6.34% | 6.41% | 5.51% | 9.31% |
| Government-service-dependent | 9.54% | 10.73% | 10.82% | 12.10% |
| Service-dependent | 14.19% | 5.56% | 11.59% | — |
| Unclassified | 16.29% | 21.27% | 29.97% | 29.61% |
Drawing lessons from the U.S. urban-rural landscape, core connotations, manifestations and characteristics of urban-rural integration are summarized as follows:
Core Connotations of Urban-Rural Integration
A continuous gradient spectrum exists between urban and rural territories, forming a hierarchical continuum between purely rural and fully urbanized zones;
Urban and rural areas are not mutually antagonistic but closely interconnected;
No hierarchical superiority exists between cities and villages — they only differ in development stage and functional positioning.
Manifestations of Urban-Rural Integration
Transformations within rural territories: emergence of rural industry, service sectors and non-agricultural populations; integrated layout of social and natural ecological facilities;
Overlapping socio-economic traits of urban and rural residents with blurred urban-rural boundaries;
Transformed urban-rural relations:
Rural areas evolve beyond mere food production bases into vital providers of public ecological goods;
The competitive, antagonistic urban-rural dynamic shifts toward complementary integration;
Spatial interdependence integrates rural regions into mainstream economic and cultural systems.
Core Characteristics of Urban-Rural Integration
Population flows to suburban and rural areas; central cities are no longer the sole destination of migration, with vast suburbs and rural zones emerging as new migration hubs;
Mutually interdependent urban and rural economies;
Narrowing structural gaps between urban and rural industries: rural sectors become increasingly non-agricultural and diversified, converging with urban industrial compositions;
Diminished disparities between urban and rural residents in income, subjective wellbeing and living standards.
III. Pathways to Urban-Rural Integration and Rural Revitalization
To address prevailing rural development bottlenecks and meet the requirements of urban-rural integration, China must forge a new type of urban-rural relationship and explore feasible integrated development pathways.
First, abandon outdated binary oppositional thinking and shift from one-way urbanization to coordinated development of urbanization and rural construction.
Second, build integrated urban-rural zones as new spatial carriers, covering metropolitan-wide integrated regions, integrated zones between megacity suburbs and central urban districts, and integrated counties plus peripheral hinterlands.
Third, deepen reform of rural factor allocation centered on land. Optimize land functional zoning and spatial allocation within metropolitan boundaries, and establish a unified national system of land rights and integrated urban-rural land markets.
Against the backdrop of rural development dilemmas, four core pathways for rural revitalization are proposed based on the construction of a new urban-rural relationship:
Industrialize agricultural production to raise land output per unit area and restructure and upgrade agricultural production factors;
Restructure rural land allocation focusing on three core reforms: the separation of ownership, contracting rights and management rights for farmland, reallocation of collective construction land, and homestead system reform;
Attract population backflow and high-end talents to drive rural revitalization;
Reshape new village forms by upgrading village landscapes, adjusting spatial boundaries, optimizing village functions, improving basic public services, tackling population aging, and inheriting and innovating rural cultural heritage.
Compiled by: Zhang Peifeng
