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| 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 |
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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.
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Received: 30 June 2012
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2012, Vol. 27 
