The emergence of counter-urbanisation in China: Can it be a pathway for rural revitalisation?

Yu, Li ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5547-9862, Wang, Yiran and Li, Mo 2024. The emergence of counter-urbanisation in China: Can it be a pathway for rural revitalisation? Habitat International 144 , 102998. 10.1016/j.habitatint.2023.102998

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Abstract

China has also experienced a phenomenon of counter-urbanisation. Many urban residents have moved to suburban and even remote rural areas for living, establishing and operating businesses over the past decade. However, research is scarce on the counter-urbanisation trend in China. This paper investigates the driving forces behind the migration of China's high-and-middle-income groups to rural areas in the Yangtze River Delta region and their impacts on rural villagers and development. The paper contends that counter-urbanisation serves as an important pathway for rural revitalisation. More significantly, China's rural land ownership system facilitates the migration of urban dwellers to rural areas, thereby promoting rural revitalisation while avoiding the rural gentrification observed in Europe and the United States. In light of this, the authors propose a new term “Rural Middle-class Formation” as a Chinese type of “rural gentrification” to achieve common prosperity in both urban and rural areas and to distinguish it from “rural gentrification."

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0197-3975
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	9 January 2024
Date of Acceptance:	21 December 2023
Last Modified:	11 Jan 2024 14:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/165360

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