How Do Smart Villages Become a Way to Achieve Sustainable Development in Rural Areas? Smart Village Planning and Practices in China

Abstract

The sustainability of rural areas is facing numerous challenges in China. The Chinese government has chosen the construction of smart villages as an important strategy to realize the sustainable development of rural areas. In this paper, we define a smart village as a rural development model that fully utilizes the solutions provided by the information and communication technology (ICT) to promote the sustainable development of the village on the basis of clarifying the characteristics and needs of rural development. Combined with general system theory, we propose a theoretical framework of the smart village system. Based on the theoretical framework of the smart village system, we analyzed the smart village strategic planning and smart village practice in China. The results of the study showed that the construction and development of smart villages in disadvantaged rural areas is the correct choice for sustainable rural development according to the current situation in China. The Chinese government’s role in promoting smart village construction has been to promote the smart village system’s strategic subsystem to enhance smart rural areas’ development through a unified overall plan and related supporting policies. The top-down smart village construction model currently adopted by China is determined by China’s political and economic system, which is mainly reflected in the centralization of power and the public economy’s dominance.