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China's rapid urbanization growth during the past decades which has highly promoted its affluence has induced various challenges for the countryside. The problem of rural decline of quite many villages which are suffering depopulation in turn challenges the urbanization sustainability in China. By way of in-depth historical and literature review, the paper finds distorted urban-rural relationship and the tendency of village decline owing to China's long time urban biased policy. By further investigating China's new-type urbanization strategy, the paper draws concerns about future rural development which is less mentioned in the plan. It calls for ruralization and actions to revitalize the countryside so as to be adapted to China's new-type urbanization plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enhancing rural resilience plays an important role in sustaining rural development when certain rural communities' decline becomes an inevitable process in the world. The paper evaluates China's rural resilience and investigates the spatio-temporal differences of rural resilience across the country in the period 2000–2018. Theoretical analysis indicates that rural resilience determines how and to what extent rural communities interact with external challenges. Empirical analysis shows a slight increasing tendency of China's rural resilience that remains below the median level. Rural resilience in Eastern China, which has a developed economy, is higher than that in Central and Western China. Compared with social resilience and engineering resilience, economic resilience is found to be the key restriction factor to China's rural resilience in the research period. This is mainly attributed to rural laborers' outflow to cities. The same findings are also seen in China's three regions. Policy implication emphasizes the importance of prioritizing rural economic growth to realize China's rural revitalization strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]