Rural Gentrification: Production System Restructuring of Rural Areas Under Deepening Urban–Rural Integration in China

Abstract

As China’s urban–rural interactions deepen, bidirectional flows of production factors reshape rural functions and social relations, giving rise to rural gentrification. The existing rural gentrification literature has focused primarily on middle-class migration and class displacement, and despite growing recognition of non-migratory external engagement in rural China, production-system restructuring in this context remains underexplored. This study selected three representative villages in Nanjing, China, for comparative case analysis and used multi-temporal point of interest (POI) and cross-sectional enterprise registration data to examine the common patterns, differentiated pathways, and formation mechanisms of production-system restructuring during rural gentrification. The results showed that rural industries, resources, and spaces were reconfigured for consumer and experiential uses as production and business activities expanded and business formats diversified, with the organizational composition of registered business entities differing across villages. Differences in production activity and business entity structures corresponded to industry extension, holistic insertion, and progressive embedding. Their formation mechanism can be summarized as the sustained integration of urban–rural flows with local production foundations. By incorporating production-system restructuring into rural gentrification analysis, this study extended conventional analysis centered on population migration and class displacement. It provided Chinese evidence for understanding diverse rural gentrification pathways in the Global South.