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This paper seeks to offer a nuanced understanding of how the rural responds to and speaks back to the urban in the context of increasingly blurred rural‐urban landscapes. The prevailing theorizations remain entrenched in an intellectual impasse that still treats the rural as a residual space or a reactive actor besieged by external urban forces. Using lineage spaces as an empirical lens, this paper delves into rural geographies of lineage landscapes in post‐reform China by articulating rural agencies in more active, non‐lineal ways. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in rural Wenzhou, southeast China, this paper argues that the articulation of rural voices amidst China's urban modernity unveils a spatial paradox of landscape de/reterritorialization at the dimensions of discourse, practice and (trans)locality. We first reveal how official rural discourses de‐territorialize and lessen lineage groups' control over their symbolic buildings while simultaneously opening up opportunities for them to mobilize officially‐sanctioned discourses to expand lineage spaces and reterritorialize their power. Second, we show how villagers embrace the de‐territorializing practice of landscape commodification, which becomes a crucial source of finance for them to perform ritual activities at specific festivals, thereby re‐asserting rural collectivism, sociality and sacredness. Third, we unpack the trans‐local dimension of rural de/reterritorialization by exploring how villagers forge lineage‐based rural networking that transcends space‐time, which paradoxically reinforces the spatial claim for territorializing rural power that is demarcated from urban/modern orientations. We further argue that these multiple spatial processes of rural de/reterritorialization challenge a reactive or neatly‐divided account of rural agency during its engagement with urbanizing relations and processes. In all, this paper offers a more complex, paradoxical account of relational rurality in a rapidly urbanizing China, and foregrounds an agenda towards more 'inclusive' rural studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water and energy are not only the foundation of high‐quality development in rural areas but also important constraints. Exploring the inner relationship between water, energy, and economic development has important significance for the high‐quality development in rural areas. This paper first constructs the evaluation index system of high‐quality development in rural areas, and quantifies high‐quality development levels in rural China from 1997 to 2021. Second, from the perspective of water footprint, the Super‐slack based measure model is used to calculate sustainable development efficiency under the constraint of water and energy. Finally, kernel density function, Gini coefficient method, and Tobit model are used to explore the evolution trend, regional differences, and driving factors of sustainable development efficiency in rural China. The results show that: (1) Under the constraint of water and energy, sustainable development efficiency in rural China is relatively low, showing a fluctuating trend of first rising and then declining. The efficiency in the western and eastern regions is higher than the national average, while the central region is the lowest. (2) The evolution trend of sustainable development efficiency in rural China, both the eastern and the western regions, shows the characteristics of "decreasing efficiency and weak polarization phenomenon," while the central region shows the characteristics of "decreasing efficiency and no polarization phenomenon." (3) The regional differences illustrate a fluctuating upward trend, which is mainly caused by the hypervariable density, followed by the differences among provinces in the eastern region. (4) Economic development, opening up, and rural marketization are the main factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances understanding of the process and mechanism of endogenous inclusive development of information and communications technology (ICT) solutions. We present a case of a bottom of the pyramid (BoP) community in a rural area in China, which has achieved sustainable furniture e‐commerce development independently. The case study demonstrates that e‐commerce development in a disadvantaged area can start from a seed business model targeting a niche market with simple products, which will incur low costs and low skill requirements for entrepreneurs, and is thus able to scale up within local BoP community. In the second stage, BoP entrepreneurs must engage in intensive learning from the seed entrepreneur and other early movers to gain the required capabilities for operating the seed business model. In the last stage, BoP entrepreneurs need to focus on business model innovation and scoping, and form a local value chain and ecosystem for e‐commerce development. Throughout the e‐commerce development process, a seed entrepreneur plays specific critical roles at each stage. Practical implications for the BoP community to take advantage of ICT innovation to achieve sustainable development are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Welfare for the disabled is becoming an important issue in China and care for people with intellectual disability is challenging because of the inadequacies in formal support and the social service system. Material and Method Based on ethnographic research in two villages in North China, this paper analyses the dilemmas of family care for people with intellectual disability. The essential data is the ethnographic record of three cases. Results Rural families strive to provide care through a set of arrangements and bear tremendous stress in the process. Conclusion Family care for people with intellectual disability in rural China has been increasingly challenged by the forces of labour migration, demographic changes and the ever-growing processes of commoditization. The role of the state has to be strengthened in welfare provision to balance the weakened family care ethos in transforming societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does rural China's political economy determine the motivations and constraints that drive small farmers and agribusiness companies into contract farming and shape its practice and impact? This paper identifies three distinctive features of contract farming in China - varied impact on rural inequality, unstable contractual relations and lack of competitiveness with other alternatives - and proposes tentative explanations linked to three features in rural China's political economy: strong collective institutions, active state support for agriculture and strong domestic markets. The recent turn in China's agrarian transition towards vertical integration of agriculture with industries is, however, undermining these conditions and may move China towards more convergence with other countries. Studying contract farming in China's unique political economy context shows not only how variations in the political economy can alter its practice and impact, but also how it needs to be evaluated in comparison with competing alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]