The Development Level and Dominant Types Partition of Rural Areas in Fujian Province of China
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Anthropologist 29(2,3): 95-106 (2017) DOI: 10.1080/09720073.2017.1359932 The Development Level and Dominant Types Partition of Rural Areas in Fujian Province of China Wen-sheng Chen1, Jin-gui Zheng2 and Shui-sheng Fan3* 1,2,3Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fujian Fuzhou, 350002, P.R. China 1Fujian Economic Information Center, Fuzhou, Fujian, 350001, P.R. China E-mail: [email protected] KEYWORDS Rural Development. Dominant Types. Evaluation Index. Beautiful Rural. China ABSTRACT This paper hierarchically constructed the Rural Development Level (RDL) evaluation index system with four evaluation indices and ten factor layer indices. The result showed that, on one hand, basic features of rural development included stability overall level, remarkable growth trend, obvious regional characteristics on Minnan area, Northern area, a small part of Minxi area in Fujian province, and undulation of different regions in different periods of Fujian’s rural development. On the other hand, rural development in Fujian province, is striking influenced by geography, resources, economy and culture, and the characteristics of agricultural modernization, new urbanization and new rural construction are main driving factors. Ultimately, the four dominant types with Industry and Commerce Oriented (I), Agricultural Industry Oriented (II), Agriculture, Industry and Commerce Oriented (III), and Agricultural Leading (IV) of rural development was divided by cluster analysis. INTRODUCTION ment, in this way to build a beautiful rural area with their specific features. Currently, the key in Under the background of deep development current beautiful village developments is to pre- of urbanization, it is important to accelerate the vent various phenomena, such as village de- pace of new rural construction and realize com- cline (Li and Zhang 2012) and loss of “nostal- mon prosperity of rural and urban areas. Espe- gia”, from happening. cially under the modern social background dom- The rural development is the process of inated by industrialization, the rural construc- transforming from the backward state of rural tion and rural community development present areas with incomplete infrastructure and low pro- certain fragility, which is emphasized and sup- ductivity to the modern state. Currently, foreign ported in various countries in the world, such as researchers found that on the rural development the “Rural Development Policies” adopted by level (RDL) based on the rurality and the rurality the European Union (EU), the South Korean are important indexes and reflect on the rural development level, internal difference and re- “New Village Movement”, the Japanese “Rural gional space (Li and Zhang 2015). For the mea- Building Movement”, the Indian “People’s Sci- surement of rurality, Cloke was the first one to ence Movement” and “Community Regenera- propose the 16 rurality indices (Cloke 1977), and tion Movement” in Taiwan. Rural features of continually, he worked with Edwards to conduct Chinese society (Fei 2012) represented that there rurality evaluation of England and Wales (Cloke are 680,000 administrative villages. Overall, the and Edwards 1986) . Due the change of era, its rural population was 46.27 percent. In 2003, the close relation with rural development (Shubin government began to emphasize the “Three 2006) and return to evaluation (Dibden et al. Rural Issues”, in 2005, the goal of socialist new 2009; Marsden and Sonnino 2008), the rural the- rural construction was proposed, in 2012, the oretical researches were popular in the 1970s, goal to build beautiful China was proposed, and which promoted the continuous attention to ru- then, it was proposed to strengthen the rural ral area in geography, science of public manage- construction of ecological civilization, environ- ment (Xia and Lu 2016) and new institutional ment protection and comprehensive improve- economics (Dwyer and Powell 2016). In devel- oped countries, researchers focused on the mo- *Address for correspondence: tivations and results of rural social changes, 96 WEN-SHENG CHEN, JIN-GUI ZHENG AND SHUI-SHENG FAN which were caused by different geographical cation can be summarized as combining various conditions in the rural society. However, the factors while dominated by industrial economy, undeveloped countries emphasized the econom- space and region, certain social and economic ic, social and political aspects of social develop- indices, functional system and spatial locations ment, and they partitioned the rural development can be used as the measurement factors and types and proposed the policy suggestion. The various technologies and methods can be used domestic researches on rural development level to gradually realize the research that combines are mainly on the aspects of sociology and man- the qualitative and quantitative evaluation and agement, which adopted two foreign approach- the spatial form analysis from the perspective of es of “rurality” and “rural development level”, rural geography, such as the ArcGIS spatial anal- respectively. However, they generally use cer- ysis (Zhang et al. 2013), constellation graphical tain indices to measure and evaluate the rural clustering method (Liu et al. 2011) and SOFM development level and conduct in-depth analy- clustering algorithm (Li et al. 2011). sis in accordance with the result, and they main- In conclusion, the domestic and foreign ly focus on the researches of rural development scholars have studied the rural development lev- transformation, development types and models, el on various aspects, and the contents and eval- including, the rural development researches that uation methods for rurality and rural develop- combine the agricultural geography (Long et al. ment level have also become diverse, systemat- 2014), rurality evaluation within the region (Li ic and complicated. Until now, there are no sys- and Wang 2013), the rural development types, tematical studies on the rural development level spatial forms and influencing factors (Li et al. under the background of beautiful rural con- 2011; Shao et al. 2015; Long et al. 2013; Chen et struction. The rural development level is an im- al. 2014), rurality assessment combined with ru- portant index to measure the beautiful rural con- ral tourism (Feng and Sha 2007; Wu et al. 2010), struction, which decides the sustainability of researches on the rurality and rural transforma- new rural construction and beautiful rural de- tion (Liu 2007; Long et al. 2012; Zhou and Wang velopment. Therefore, in order to promote the 2013), and types division of rural multifunction construction of beautiful rural, various cities and and evaluation (Li et al. 2017). In conclusion, the counties in Fujian Province, they have adopted domestic and foreign researchers reported the various effective support policies. However, af- rural development level on various aspects, ter the economic zone has been built on the west which can promote the rural development in both coast of the Taiwan Straits, it is still unclear theory and practice. whether the rural development level can pro- This paper focused on the rural development mote the sustainable beautiful rural development level and the classification of development, and in Fujian Province. Therefore, it is particularly on the evaluation of rurality through the devel- important to evaluate and study the rural devel- opment of the introduction of qualitative meth- opment level in Fujian Province for pertinent od (Pini 2002). As descripted by Cloke, simple construction. Based on that, with Fujian Prov- linear summation and Pini’s semi-structured in- ince as demonstration, this paper will analyze the terview, to the application of Q method by rural development level, spatial pattern and dom- Duenckmann was tested (Duenckmann 2010). inate type of 57 counties and cities since 2010 Additionally, the foreign researchers have de- based on county scale, hoping to provide refer- veloped from simple qualitative and quantita- ence to making scientific plan and policies for tive analysis to comprehensive qualitative and beautiful rural construction in Fujian Province. quantitative analysis. The domestic researches focus on the construction of rural evaluation METHODOLOGY system, and the methods of linear weighting summation (Long et al. 2009), multiple-index com- Introduction of Research Area prehensive evaluation (Long et al. 2013) and mechanical equilibrium model (Zhou et al. 2013) Fujian Province, located at the coastal area are used. On the aspect of development type in southeast China, has pleasant climes. The classification, the domestic and foreign schol- administrative region covers 9 cities, 26 munici- ars all believe that rural development is a multi- pal districts, 59 counties and 14,745 administra- level and multi-factor system. Its type classifi- tive villages, due to various factors such as di- THE DEVELOPMENT LEVEL AND DOMINANT TYPES PARTITION 97 verse terrains and economic difference, it has farmer living standard, public infrastructure con- developed Minnan Culture, Hakka Culture and dition and rural social security are used as the Mindong Culture, and the rural development has level evaluation indices; 10 factors are used as formed the overall situation of significant region- the factor level indices, including the propor- al features, rich and diverse types and signifi- tion of agricultural population in the total popu- cant cultural differences. Meanwhile, Fujian Prov- lation and rural land productivity, and the as- ince is a main