Recently, a book entitled Land Use Transitions and Rural Restructuring in China was published by Springer. This book has a total of 563 pages and 166 illustrations, including 146 color pictures, and is divided into four parts, each containing three to four Chapters. Part I, Land Use Transitions, covers the theoretical approach for understanding land use transitions, farmland use transition and rural housing land transition in China and their coupling analysis in four Chapters. Part II, Rural Restructuring, treats rural restructuring in four Chapters with particular emphasis upon the evolution of ‘elements-structure-function’ of rural territory affecting rural restructuring including three aspects of spatial restructuring, economic restructuring and social restructuring. Part III, Rural Restructuring Promoted by Land Use Transitions, with three Chapters, places special emphasis on land consolidation, as an indispensable way of rural restructuring and vitalization promoted by land use transitions. Part IV, Reflections and Futures, devotes three Chapters to the adjusting and controlling land use transitions, the policies and countermeasures ensuring rural restructuring, and probing the future of rural China.

Professor Michael Woods, the Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences and the former editor of Journal of Rural Studies, wrote a Foreword for this book. He spoke highly of the book and thought it presents a rich blend of national and regional scale statistical analysis with detailed local case studies, combining quantitative and qualitative data and adding sophisticated critical and theoretically-informed analysis that both acknowledges historical trends and looks ahead to future projections, and is an important contribution to building a new literature of rural geography that is written from China articulating explanations and formulating concepts that are rooted in empirical research on the Chinese experience.

The author is Prof. LONG Hualou at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He is Director of the Department of Agricultural Geography and Rural Development at IGSNRR, CAS, and the Steering Committee Member of the IGU Commission on the Sustainability of Rural Systems. His research interests include China’s rural restructuring, urban–rural development, land use transition, and sustainable land use. He has published nine books including one translation on land use and urban–rural development and over 280 original research papers. He was awarded Highly Cited Researcher in the field of Social Sciences in both 2019 and 2020.  

Link: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811549236