Rural Transformation Development and Its Influencing Factors in China’s Poverty-Stricken Areas: A Case Study of Yanshan-Taihang Mountains

Abstract

Rural China has undergone a rapid transformation in the past few decades, especially the poverty-stricken areas, making a historic leap from inadequate subsistence to full well-off status. Based on rural regional system theory, this study analyzes the connotation of rural transformation development (RTD), explores the spatio-temporal patterns of RTD in the Yanshan-Taihang Mountainous, and diagnoses its influencing factors using a geographically and temporally weighted regression model. The results show that RTD is a dynamic process of qualitative changes in rural regional systems based on the accumulation of quantitative changes of elements, and the key to its measurement lies in analyzing the coupling coordination degree between quantitative changes of elements. From 2000 to 2020, the rapid development of urban population share, non-agricultural industry share, construction land share and NDVI in the Yanshan-Taihang Mountains contributed to a leap in RTD status, and the proportion of counties in a coupling coordination state increased from 24.24% to 96.97%. Spatially, the RTD level in the Taihang Mountains was significantly superior to that in the Yanshan Mountains. Average years of schooling, road density, per capita GDP and urban–rural dual structure were the main influencing factors of RTD, of which the first three were positive factors and the last one presented a negative correlation. To promote RTD to a higher level, it is an urgent matter to boost the high-quality development of county economy and rural education, improve public transportation infrastructure and innovate the policy system.