A key program entitled “The Models of New Countryside Construction and the Ways of Sustainable Development in Eastern Coastal China”, funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), has been completed after four years of hard work (2007-2010). The research has made some progress as follows:

1． Series data sets, indicator systems and mathematical models were established to analyze the spatio-temporal rules concerning rural development;

2． The process and evolvement state of rural development was simulated and analyzed;

3． The rural development models at regional scale and village level suitable for different regional types were diagnosed;

4． The strategic orientation, emphasis fields and construction idea concerning new countryside construction in eastern coastal China were determined;

5． The interaction process of rural hollowing and rapid urbanization and its effects on rural development was simulated and analyzed, and rural land consolidation planning and demonstration application have been pushed forward;

6． The ways of sustainable new countryside construction were probed.

Aiming at the research objectives and contents of the NSFC key program, this research team had published two monographs, three symposium proceedings, and 123 papers, of which 25 papers in SCI/SSCI Journals and 4 papers in EI Journals.

The program’s principal investigator (PI) Professor LIU Yansui at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR), Chinese Academy of Sciences, led a research team composed of Professors LONG Hualou, ZHANG Yifeng and LU Qi, and other 30 more researchers at IGSNRR and the Ministry of Land and Resources of China, to carry out this program and gotan excellent (“A”) credit score from NSFC.