THE CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY ON THE RURAL-URBAN RELATIONS IN CHINA
YE Chao1, CHEN Ming-xing2,3
1. College of Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210046, China;
2. Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, CAS, Beijing 100101, China;
3. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China
Abstract The relationship between city and countryside is one of the most important social and economic phenomena, and the rural-urban gap is a pressing problem with which China is confronted. However, they don't only belong to the themes of social and economic research. It is very necessary to study rural-urban relations from the view of history and cultural geography. The geographical conditions, especially whether a country abuts against sea and river or not, and institution-culture are essential reasons which decide the evolvement of rural-urban relations in China. At the beginning of civilization, both the East and the West emphasize and mainly develop agriculture, and regard the rural as a symbol of ‘nature’. However, in the course of transition from an agricultural society to urbanization, Chinese is different from the West. China is a long-term agricultural-oriented society, but the West, from the start of ancient Greece especially stresses the urban civilization. There are some differences on rural-urban relations among China, Japan and the West. Mediterranean breeds a kind of urban civilization in ancient Greece and Rome, but China as a country mostly making use of inland river like Yellow River and Yangtze River and facing the sea on the one side in the long history, mainly is a kind of rural civilization whose policies and culture emphasize on farming but restrain the development of trade and city. Under the influences of these cultural geographical factors, there is long-term harmonization between city and countryside about over 2,000 years in China, but long-term rural-urban confliction in the history of the Western Europe. This kind of historical characteristic has a profound impact on urbanization and rural-urban relations in China nowadays. The ultimate aim of reforming rural-urban relationships in China should be to realize equality and harmonization between the rural and the urban.
2012, Vol. 27 
