Finding out "East and West China": Marketization and Current Changes in Rural Areas

Since the reform and opening up, the emergence of the unified national labor market, agricultural product market, and national marriage "market"has led rural areas to move towards freedom and openness. Marketization changes the way society is connected, breaks the local features of rural areas, and turns people and property in rural areas into freely flowing elements. Market location determines the direction of rural people and property flow. Under the joint action of the three major markets, rural people and property shows a feature of entering from the east and exiting from the west, resulting in significant differences in the order and development of rural areas in China. The rural areas in the eastern and central western regions not only differ in terms of urban-rural relations, village forms and so on, but also have differences in development paths. From the perspective of relationship between farmers and the market, "East and West China" presents the logic and distribution of rural changes after the reform and opening up. So it is proposed to base the true precondition of "East and West China" in positioning rural development, implementing rural revitalization strategies, reforming grassroots governance, and making major policy contents and methods about rural reform and construction.