Speaker
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Since the 1950s, China’s rural areas have provided abundant cheap land, labour, and agricultural products to fuel urbanization and industrialization. To sustain this role, the state established institutional arrangements that marginalized rural areas in administrative, fiscal, and land development rights, alongside an unequal welfare distribution structure between urban and rural residents (Verdini and Xin, 2024). To ensure this extractive system functioned across China’s vast territory, the government adopted a semi-formal governance model rooted in practices from the imperial era. Contemporary governance relies on “Janus-faced” village cadres who act as both community leaders and party-state agents, enabling flexible yet authoritative implementation of state directives tailored to local rural contexts (Xin and Gallent, 2024).
Over the past two decades, significant rural restructuring has occurred as the central government prioritized narrowing urban-rural disparities and improving access to basic services in rural areas (Shen, 2020). These efforts have increased the economic connectivity between urban and rural regions, while also diversifying the socio-spatial structures of rural areas. However, these changes have weakened the state-backed village cadre-centred governance structure. Emerging local forces, such as clans, gangsters, and entrepreneurs, have played increasingly prominent roles in rural governance, further eroding the authority of the central government. At the same time, the institutional structures underpinning urban-rural disparities remain largely unaltered.
In 2012, the new government introduced the National Rural Revitalization Strategy, marking the first time rural areas were positioned on equal footing with urban areas in national development priorities. This strategy is projected to allocate approximately 1 trillion USD to promote socio-economic development and improve living environments in rural regions (Xin and Deng, 2025). Similar to the EU’s Integrated Territorial Development approach, rural revitalization emphasizes cross-sectoral collaboration (e.g., encouraging community participation), multi-level governance (e.g., requiring contributions from all levels of government), and place-based strategies (e.g., exploring mechanisms to ensure rural households benefit from development gains). Some scholars have thus interpreted this as a neo-endogenous development model, a community-driven networked development approach.
However, unlike neo-endogenous development, which emerged in the context of neoliberal state withdrawal, I argue that China’s rural revitalization represents a state-led networked development model with steered endogenous features, which I term Neo-Exogenous Development. A defining characteristic of this model is the top-down penetration of state power into rural communities through political mobilization. This approach serves two purposes: restoring the central government’s grassroots authority and addressing structural rural marginalization.
This study critically examines the complex policy framework underpinning rural revitalization, including its associated laws, regulations, and initiatives, to theorize Neo-Exogenous Development. Through a qualitative case study of a village in Sichuan Province, an inland region in western China, this research explores the dynamics of the Neo-Exogenous model in practice. Findings reveal that state-driven measures targeting both government structures and rural society include: nationwide multi-scalar political mobilization, legislative and regulatory restructuring, zoning/rescaling, project-based financial expansion, community-based party-building, and urban-rural connecting initiatives.
These interventions, particularly those aimed at government institutions, have adjusted urban-industry-biased local development agendas. They have enhanced the administrative and fiscal authority of local rural governments and expanded villages’ rights to land development. The state also plays a critical role in addressing market failures by channelling market resources into rural areas, fostering collaborations between enterprises and villages, and ensuring mechanisms for farmers to share in development benefits.
Nevertheless, despite its strengths, the Rural Revitalization Strategy serves a dual purpose of socio-economic development and reinforcing state’s grassroots authority. This dual intent leads to an ambiguous stance on removing institutional barriers that restrict rural endogenous development. Consequently, many rural revitalizations practices risk being reduced to the construction of showcase villages, undermining the broader transformative potential of the strategy.
References
Shen, M. (2020). Rural Revitalization Through State-led Programs. Singapore: Springer.
Verdini, G. & Xin, S. (2024) Culture-led Rural Revitalisation in Chinese Intermediary Cities. Challenges and Opportunities under the Pandemic. In Pernice, R. & Chen, B. (eds.) Australian and Chinese Perspectives on Urban Regeneration and Rural Revitalisation. London: Routledge, 160-179.
Xin, S. & Deng, H. (2025). Beyond entrepreneurism: China’s emerging party-statecraft of Rural Revitalization, Habitat International, 156, 103277.
Xin, S. & Gallent, N. (2024) Conceptualising ‘neo-exogenous development’: The active party-state and activated communities in Chinese rural governance and development, Journal of Rural Studies, 109, 103306.
| Keywords | neo-endogenous development; social innovation; rural marginalization; statecraft; China |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
