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Since the mid-2000s, rural development and politics in China has entered a new phase that revolves around what the central government calls 'agricultural modernization'. Transforming the once-dominant smallholding, family-based agriculture has become a focal point of the government's programme of rural rejuvenation, where a range of economic changes unleashed by urbanization and industrialization also converge. We argue that in this new context, agrarian change has become the key vantage point from which to study rural China. We review key contributions of the papers in this special issue and highlight their insights on rural differentiation, land politics and rural livelihoods. We discuss how studying the ' Chinese path' of agrarian transition can contribute to ongoing debates on key themes in agrarian studies, including both the agrarian questions of capital and of labour, and how agrarian political economy offers unique perspectives on the overall processes of capitalist development in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]