Revelations from the UK's rural development policies for rural revitalisation in China

Rural Revitalization in the countryside of China has been incorporated into the national development strategy. It is very necessary to learn from the experiences of the developed countries in the decision-making and practical approaches to rural development. Especially, there are great challenges in the process of rural revitalization. Among them, The Great Britain is first to realize the industrial revolution and urbanization in the world. There is no absolute poverty between the urban and rural areas after the integrated urban and rural development over the last 80 years. Specifically, there is no significant difference in the public facilities and service provision between urban and rural areas. Generally speaking, it takes a long term to achieve common prosperity for the urban and rural areas in the British. Instead, there are also some mistakes that suffered from enormous challenges in history. The rural revitalization policies in China can also be drawn some inspiration to learn the lessons from the mistakes and experiences of the British rural development policies. Therefore, this research aims to explore the policies and specific measures in the process of rural development using the literature and document review, as well as site visits. England was also selected as a case, where the population and economic activities were dominated in the UK. An emphasis was put on the flow of significant factors of production to the rural areas, and the rational space allocation in the process of social and economic transformation for the sustainable rural development of the countryside. The results show that rural development in England was a systematic approach guided by the government’s policies, but operating in the market. The influence of government never disappeared, but without dominating rural development. By contrast, the market with high efficiency played a dominant role in the process. Four elements were available to be learned in China, including 1) the environmental protection was treated as a core issue; 2) equal development between the urban and rural without the negative impacts of policies on the rural areas via rural proofing mechanism as a base; 3) the rural markets in towns were the spatial hubs to intensively allocate the resources to save the cultivated land; and 4) the diversification of agriculture to lead the sustainable rural development as the goals. A systematic analysis was then summarized of the rural and agricultural policies in England. Three recommendations were proposed to realize rural revitalization in China, considering the social and economic background at present. They were 1) the delivery of sustainable consumption and production model to promote rural revitalization. The lessons of environmental protection as a core issue, diversification of agriculture, and sustainable rural development as the goals were the vital components of sustainable consumption and production; 2) the intensive development of townships and rural towns as a pivotal space, in order to promote the diversified development, while strictly protecting the cultivated land. There was also the primary policy in England, since the two countries were similar, in terms of the low level of agricultural land per capita in the world, and 3) the shortage of rural talents should be addressed to achieve endogenous development. It was not an issue in England, due to the development and urbanization stage. However, the outflow of talent is one of the critical challenges in rural China, such as a shortage of skillful talents, technologies, and capital investment. It is suggested to promote the rural mid-classification with the Chinese unique land ownership, in order to avoid the rural gentrification in western countries. Nevertheless, a rural training mechanism should also be established to improve the skill of local peasants. This finding can provide significant support to the policy formulation for integrated urban and rural development and the process of rural revitalization. © 2022 Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering. All rights reserved.