Evolutionary Path and Mechanism of Village Revitalization: A Case Study of Yuejin Village, Jiangsu, China

Abstract

A profound understanding of how China’s villages gradually grow from rural decline to vitalization has essential theoretical and practical values. Through an exploratory case study, this paper adopted the grounded theory method analyzing the village-level data collected from Yuejin in Jiangsu province, China, to reveal the leading forces, the evolutionary path, and mechanism of a typical village revitalizing during the past 40 years of China’s economic reform. Based on comprehensive rural development theory, this article identifies the “critical”, “transitional”, and “induced” forces at different stages of the case village growth, to reveal the cultivation mechanism of rural poverty alleviation, prosperity, and revitalization. The results show that the evolution mechanism of rural revitalization is a process in which the rural core competence evolves from low to high level and from traditional subsistence agriculture to market-oriented industry. The evolution essence of rural revitalization is the integration, reconfiguration, and optimization of the resource under the specific cultivation mechanisms, corresponding to the rural growth path of self-repairing, self-adapting, and self-improving. This study contributes to a better understanding of the growth track of a typical agricultural village during the transition from poverty to vitalization.