Balancing Rural and Urban Development: Applying Coordinated Urban–Rural Development (CURD) Strategy to Achieve Sustainable Urbanisation in China

Abstract

Land in rural China has been under a separate and closed management system for decades even after the urban land reform that started in the late 1980s. The blurred property rights over rural land have been hindering the rural welfare as surplus rural land in sub-urban areas cannot be circulated into more economic use without first being requisitioned by the state. This traditional conversion process creates a lot of problems, among them are the compensation standard as well as displacement of rural residents to the city, where they cannot find adequate welfare protection. The prolonged disparity in economic outcomes for rural and urban residents in China in the process of urbanisation has made the authority realise that land-based local finance is no longer an option. Coordinated Urban and Rural Development (CURD) ideology arises to set a level playing field by giving the rural residents comparable welfare status as their urban counterparts' one. The CURD ideology is basically linked to the strategic development of the three main issues in the rural area of China, or in the Chinese terminology: San Nong. These three issues are rural villages, rural enterprises and rural farmers (nong cun, nong ye, nong min). CURD ideology is to preserve the livelihood of rural villages, facilitate and promote rural enterprises and increase the living standard of rural farmers. Most importantly, however, CURD policy package bestows rural residents with property rights over their farmland so that they could sub-co1ntract the user-rights to other urban commercial entities for higher benefits. While CURD policies are applied in a lot of different regions in China including Chongqing in the West, Qingdao in the North, Zhongshan in the South and Wuhan in the middle, we focus our examination in Chengdu as the Chengdu model has been widely documented and highly regarded as the most successful model in implementing the CURD strategies. From our case study, we find that CURD policies reduce the pressure for rural residents to migrate to the city for better job opportunities, which in turn reduce the need to expand the development scale, especially housing needs, of the urban configuration. Consequently, CURD ideology helps contribute to a more sustainable urbanisation process in China that accommodates and balances the needs and interests of both the city and rural residents.

RETRACTED: Improvement in the Poverty Status of Ecological Migrants under the Urban Resettlement Model: An Empirical Study in China

“…For example, Zhao Xu et al [8] analyzed the impact of out-migration agricultural resettlement on land disposal behavior and livelihood transition of reservoir migrants in the middle route of the South-to-North Water Transfer Project, and then suggested a resettlement model with no or little land. Ling-Hin Li [9] found that a centralized resettlement model significantly reduced the probability of relocation households choosing a diversified livelihood compared with the scattered resettlement model. Tian Peng et al [10] conducted an in-depth analysis of a community in Xinxiang, Henan province based on the "urban and rural continuum" framework, concluding that new urbanized communities are characterized by integrated infrastructure and public services, diversified livelihood models, and the implementation of new community governance models.…”

Factors influencing farmers' intentions for urban–rural harmony in metropolitan fringes and regional differences therein

“…Once the gap between urban and rural areas continues to widen, it will lose social equity and cause serious social problems. To realize better and faster development of the regional economy and society, urban–rural harmony development is inevitable (Li, ; Li, ; Long, , ; Tu & Long, ; Yang & Xu, ). Urban–rural harmony development refers to drawing up the economic and social development plans of urban and rural areas uniformly as one entity (Zhong, Li, & Wang, ).…”

Critical Behavioral Risk Factors among Principal Participants in the Chinese Construction Industry

“…Additionally, the educational backgrounds of participants and the overall quality of their contribution is uneven. In fact, the percentage of construction participants in China having a bachelor's degree or higher is very low [6,7]. Hence, the probability of the behavioral risk among principal construction participants in China is very high.…”