Clustering can rewrite the story of rural China

For years, China has invested heavily in rural revitalization, yet many villages remain trapped in a cycle of scattered resources, duplicated infrastructure, and limited industrial scale.

The core reason is straightforward: local governance and funding have traditionally treated each administrative village as an independent development unit. That approach is now changing.

China's "No. 1 central document" for 2026 advocates for a "classified, orderly, zone-based promotion of rural revitalization". The policy signals a profound shift from single-village autonomy to cluster-based, cross-village cooperation.

China's rural population has declined steeply from its 1995 peak of 859 million to 451 million in 2025, a decrease of 47.5 percent. Villages have moved along vastly different trajectories: some have grown steadily amid urban-rural integration, some have merged seamlessly into nearby towns, while others have shrunk and declined due to sustained population outflow.

The previous model allocated budgets village by village, leading to fragmented investment. A single village cannot sustain a specialty industry, build a competitive tourism brand, or attract professional operators.

Neighboring villages competed instead of cooperating, resulting in redundant roads, duplicated facilities, and price undercutting. This led to a lose-lose situation where many villages struggled to achieve economies of scale and public resources were spread too thin.

The new cluster development framework is built on three principles.

First, classified positioning assigns tailored development paths to individual villages based on their growth potential, location and resources.

Second, phased progress prioritizes improvements in transportation and public infrastructure before rolling out public services and industrial projects.

Third, spatial integration groups neighboring villages with complementary resources into functional clusters. These clusters transcend rigid administrative boundaries to integrate land, capital and talent, achieving economies of scale unattainable by individual villages.

A typical cluster may combine one village's natural scenic resources, another's specialty agricultural products, and a third's surplus rural labor. Spatial restructuring reduces redundant infrastructure spending and encourages functional specialization.

Instead of competing for identical projects, villages within a cluster focus on differentiated roles in production, processing, tourism and logistics based on their strengths. The result is coordinated revitalization that transforms rural decline into collective growth.

Zhejiang province has taken the lead in piloting this approach. In 2025, the province identified 226 provincial-level core villages for driving the development of 1,447 surrounding villages. These rural clusters host 1,094 key projects, with planned investment nearing 33 billion yuan ($4.85 billion) over the next three years.

Three institutional innovations underpin the effective operation of rural clusters.

First, cross-village Party building alliances establish collaborative governance mechanisms, breaking administrative barriers between villages. Second, professional management teams serve as impartial coordinators, replacing outdated zero-sum competition with cluster-wide win-win planning that allows all villages to share the benefits of unified regional branding and industrial development.

Third, binding institutional rules firmly protect farmers' legitimate rights, ensuring that there are no changes in collective asset ownership, no damage to traditional rural landscapes and cultural features, and no forced merger of villages. These safeguards are critical to maintaining grassroots trust and long-term social stability.

It is important to clarify that cluster development does not aim for uniform prosperity for every village. Population decline and the gradual disappearance of some small villages are natural outcomes of demographic and economic changes.

The cluster model allows resources to shift away from shrinking settlements while maintaining basic public services for the remaining residents. This realistic approach avoids unnecessary fiscal expenditure and prevents the futile effort of sustaining unviable villages. Rural depopulation, aging and fragmented public investment are universal global challenges, faced by both developed and developing economies alike.

Many countries have relied on village-centric rural development policies. Though well-intentioned, these programs often fall into the same trap of fragmentation and low efficiency.

China's cluster development formula offers valuable global insights. Reconfiguring governance from isolated villages to functional rural clusters can unlock latent resources and developmental potential that conventional village-level planning cannot achieve.

While no single model can be copied wholesale across borders, the core principle is universal: development requires scale, and administrative boundaries should not determine rural modernization.

Embracing cluster-based thinking will drive China's rural revitalization and offer practical references for global rural governance.

The author is a professor at the School of Humanities and Law in Northeastern University, and a senior associate editor of the Journal of Rural Studies.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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