This commentary welcomes Gillen et al.'s geographies of ruralization as an alternative to the urban-centered analysis of socio-spatial transformation in post-reform China. We offer three perspectives to further develop such alternative articulation by drawing on China's most recent geographical experiences of rural revitalization. The first is the “top-down” process of rural revitalization launched by different levels of Chinese state agents and how this is divergent from local needs or embedded in bottom-up engagement. The second is the temporal dimension of ruralization highlighting how uses of the past are implicated in and legitimize the state agenda of rural revitalization. The third directs attention to the entanglement of nature and culture—that is, how a harmonious human–nature approach to rural revitalization is produced in discourse and practice. We argue that these alternative insights offer possibilities of developing more inclusive geographies of ruralization in the Global South and beyond.

The role of sending states receives little attention in existing studies of transnational religion; another body of literature on diaspora governance gives little scrutiny to the religious dimension of diaspora strategies. This paper attempts to bridge the two bodies of works by exploring the state-directed religious networking in the Chinese diaspora. Through a case study of the Guangze Zunwang cult, it investigates how origin states mobilize migrant religious networks for diaspora engagement and how diaspora communities respond to governing strategies. Different Chinese (non)state agents operate diasporic religious programs-international cultural tourism festivals and deities' cross-border processions-respectively within and outside the territory. Inspired by the state-directed networking, diaspora groups also launch temple alliances in residential places, yet at the same time, produce alternative networks dedicated to revitalizing the cult. The paper sheds light on the multiplicity and flexibility of diaspora governance and provides further insights into the agency of the diaspora through transnational religious networking.

Research on the intermediate space or interface where rural and urban boundaries become blurred has been gaining momentum within geography and other intersecting fields. In contrast to the dominant focus on the growth of urbanism at the rural‐urban interface, a growing number of studies have emerged to intervene the debate from the rural side. This paper contributes to this burgeoning scholarship by reviewing recent work on geographical articulations of rurality in the face of urbanizing forces and processes operating in intermediate spaces. I firstly explore how extant representations of rurality at the rural‐urban interface are inherent with an “idyllic” vision, a “modernist” one or a combination of both, and how the interactions among multiple rural visions produce tensions and conflicts at the interface. Then, I outline the recent conceptualizations of rurality under the relational and materialist turns, which move beyond the discursive construction of the countryside and offer new theoretical insights and analytical concepts for appreciating multiple, heterogeneous, open and inclusive articulations of rural voices at the interface. Finally, I map out directions for future research to attend to the insufficiently‐addressed temporal dimensions of the rural‐urban interface, thereby moving current discussions of relational rurality forward.

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.

A growing body of scholarship on transnational religion is grounded within the analytical framework of the religionmigration relationship and has highlighted migrant individuals and groups as main players in forging religious networking. This ignores a wide range of alternative drivers that are forceful in the (re)making of transnational religious networks. In this introduction of the special issue, we therefore open a collection of nine articles which contribute to alternative articulations of transnational religious networks. In particular, our contributors introduce three alternative drivers -ideas, institutions and digital technologies -in (re)producing religious mobilities, connections and networks across nation borders. At the same time, they offer fascinating insights into the diversified ways alternative actors and channels weave together religious migrants' imaginations, practices and experiences, formulating new, complex forms of religious (re)production in a transnational world. This special issue also highlights the creativity, flexibility and vitality of Asian religions in the 21st century modernity.