Abstract
China has made great progress in its economy and urbanization in the past 30 years, but rural development has lagged behind the cities and the gap between urban and rural areas continues to widen. The Chinese government implemented the “Building New Countryside Plan” in 2006, which used a new policy of increasing the urban land quota linked with decreasing rural construction land to promote rural transformation and the coordinated development of the urban–rural area. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of rural transformation caused by comprehensive land consolidation and to improve the future practical operability of the policy, a field survey on 42 projects in Jiangsu Province was conducted from March–August 2016. The results of this study showed that: (1) Comprehensive land consolidation had a significant role in promoting rural transformation based on the premise of excluding the average growth rate and 88.1% of the project’s farmers’ income achieved a faster increase than other areas; (2) the increase in the farmer’s income was mainly attributed to non-agricultural income as non-agricultural employment was still a precondition for rural transformation and the degree of local industrialization and educational levels received by farmers were limited for rural transformation; (3) the transfer fees of the land quota were the key factor to maintain the financial balance between demolition and resettlement, but local land quota demand and government capacity in financial operations affected rural restructuring; and (4) the absence of rural social welfare systems significantly affected the land transfer rate. The above conclusions are helpful in understanding the dynamic mechanism of rural transformation, enriching the academic literature in related fields, and are of practical significance for rural revitalization in developing countries.
Highlights
China has made remarkable achievements in rural socioeconomic development since the Reform and Open-up, which was a policy of shifting from a planned to a market economy and attracting foreign investment in 1978
Rural recession has become a major challenge for integration development of urban-rural areas and inclusive growth in China
This study aims at unraveling the role and practical effects of comprehensive land consolidation on rural transformation
Summary
China has made remarkable achievements in rural socioeconomic development since the Reform and Open-up, which was a policy of shifting from a planned to a market economy and attracting foreign investment in 1978. The absolute income gap between urban and rural residents is still enlarging. The per capita net income of China’s rural residents has increased from 134.0 CNY to 9892.6 CNY between 1978–2016. The per capita net income of urban residents was 343.0 CNY in 1978 and 33,616.2 CNY in 2016 [7]. In 2006, the Chinese government began to arrange the “Building New Countryside Plan”, which was a program of promoting rural economic development, improving rural living conditions, and reducing the gap between urban and rural areas in rural China [3,8,9,10]. The support of agriculture, the countryside, and farmers has continued to increase, the stagnation of the rural economy has not been fundamentally reversed. Rural transformation in China lacks a strong institutional opportunity and economic driver
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