CONNOTATIONS OF RURAL REGIONAL MULTIFUNCTION AND ITS POLICY IMPLICATIONS IN CHINA
LIU Yu1,2, LIU Yan-sui1, GUO Li-ying3
1. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China;
2. National Engineering Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture, Beijing 100097, China;
3. Institute of Natural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
Abstract Rural areas are able to fulfill diversified functions, including social function, economic function as well as ecological and environmental function, and an individual region has its specific combination of functions. At different developmental stages, a region has special strategic objectives and core issues to be resolved as well as various functions that conferred by regional development. Rural regional multifunction possesses the basic characteristics of subjective cognition, multiple compositions, interaction, spatial variation and temporal evolution. The interaction of rural elements promotes the evolution of rural functions; rural region multifunction are in the process of dynamic evolution, and the evolutionary process is divided by function into four stages, including growth stage, flourishing stage, stability stage and decline stage. During the rural transformation, optimization and integration of rural elements is the fundamental driving force for multifunction evolution. For the differences of resource endowment, location condition, stage of economic development and developing strategic orientation, rural functions in various regions have significantly spatial heterogeneity and temporal variability. Each rural area will choose the appropriate function as the focus of training and developing, which lead to different patterns of land allocation and industrial distribution. For the specific scientific problems in the identification and evaluation of territorial dominant functions, there are still many weak points that need to further study in the related theories and methods construction in geography. Through the in-depth analysis of the connotation of rural region multifunction, this study will provide a scientific basis for rural specialized development and for the promotion of rural function value.
2011, Vol. 26 
