Rural Renaissance Beyond Linear Transition

Rural development plays a very important part in the process of China’s modernization, which also is the basic work of the new urbanization construction. When urban-rural integration is catching more and more attention nowadays, lots of rural transition practices have sprung up all over the country. However, due to the uncompleted understanding of rural ontology, there are some blindly and aggressive rural construction in our real life, which has violated the laws of rural disciplines and had bad influence on rural sustainable development. Whether if we only have one linear transformation path for rural to catch up with cities and keep growing? Can we pass by the "urbanization" and "industrialization" of the traditional and come back to rural value itself, to realize rural renaissance. This is the core issue of this study.The paper illustrates the progress of rural transition in China and abroad, reflecting the wrong value of "taking increase as development". Then it takes Wujiazui and Dashan village in Gaochun District as studying cases. The two respectively represent two kinds of typical villages:one is a linear transition following the urbanization industrialization mode, while the other one goes beyond the traditional path and return to rural natural value. The paper chooses the research perspective of rural production relationship changes to rural factors restructuring, paying high attention on developing history of the two villages, including their internal space, land, capital allocation, labor and other characteristics. At last the paper makes a comparison of the two cases from the aspect of rural fair benefit and rural value manifestation, and deepening the thinking of the current China’s rural transition, basing on ontology value. Considering the future urban-rural relationship, it puts forward the conception of rural renaissance, to further imagine future China rural development.The research finds that Wujiazui Village belongs to first stage of rural transition in our country, operating in the name of "collectivism", which provides an important reference for rural endogenous development. However, the problems of this kind of pattern is appearing in the progress, including village imitating the city, the value of the country is becoming more and more weak, the internal differentiation and so on. Collectivism means more rural leaders support and ambitions from local governments to build a "flagship" village. Dashan Village is the representative of the contemporary renaissance, under the background of urban-rural overall development. With production factors flowing, reconstruction and production relations adjustment, the rural area are outputting both material and cultural elements to the urban, and realizing initial prosperity at the same time. In the new era, Dashan case highlights the significant value in the urban-rural continuum, providing important experience to future transition.By comparing the cases, we found that economic aggregate is not everything, there is unfair and inefficiency behind Wujiazui, the richest village. The low threshold of rural services provides more opportunities for those who have different financial strength and ages. Under the background of new urban-rural relation, as for rural areas people think more of their true value instead of simple economic data. Wujiazui is acting more alienated to a "town" form while Dashan explain what a village "should" to be. To run beyond the linear transition, this paper thinks rural should focus on their own unique value, including the rural as farmland, the rural as hinterland and the rural as homeland. As for rural renaissance, it emphasizes to reaffirm and to recognize rural value:reveal the uniqueness of the country, which is the external key characterization, as well as the realization of society organization, which is the internal key mechanism. As a systematic conception, rural renaissance appears varies forms, bearing with industry, capital, governance, culture and other more factors. At the same time, rural renaissance relates closely with urban-rural linkages, rural land institution and social consumption habit and so on.The paper is organized as follows:Chapter Ⅰ is introduction. The paper analyzes the macro background, and have a summary description of the research significance, research objects、study cases and some related concepts.Chapter Ⅱ is the progress and practice of rural transition abroad. The paper explains the evolution of the rural transformation process in western research, and locates rural areas in rural-urban continuum. The paper also draws some experiences of rural construction from France, Japan and South Korea, Taiwan.Chapter Ⅲ is the progress and mechanism of rural transition in China. It concludes three stages of Chinese rural transition from 1978, and gives a review on transition mechanism and pathway studies, in order to reflect on the shortage of theoretical researchChapter Ⅳ is production relationship changes and rural development, which is the first part of empirical study. It illustrates the developing history of Wujiazui and Dashan Village, considering different social developing background. The main points are the influence on rural transition, from production changes including urban-rural background, national policies and local institutional arrangements.Chapter V is reconstruction of rural factors, which is the second part of case study. It mainly put an eye on different rural forms in land transfer, space reconstruction, capital operation, industrial development, labors organization and rural leaders.Chapter VI is discussion on rural renaissance, basing on rural value recognition. The paper compares the two cases from developing efficiency and manifestation of rural value, in order to explore new ways beyond linear rural transition. By analyzing value of contemporary rural areas, it tries to build a framework of rural renaissance, and discusses the content and realizing ways of renaissance.Chapter VII is conclusions and discussions. It mainly summarizes the research conclusions and innovation points in the study and proposes research prospects.