Rural commodification with rural transformation development is a potential research agenda for rural geography. Based on semi-structured interviews in five times fieldwork in Xixinan Village, Huangshan, China, this article examines how the township government as an actor with entrepreneurialism promotes the commodification of place in rural areas and its impact on rural transformation development. It was found that the township government has drawn economic returns from different subjects of tourism entrepreneurs, tourists, and lifestyle immigrants by the efforts of commodifying real estate, creative tourism experience, and nature. Rural transformation development is accompanied by rural commodification, showing rural gentrification, expansion of employment opportunities for women, and the readjustment of the social structure of the family in the demographic structure. Rural tourism and rural creative industries have developed, complementing the single agricultural structure, constituting a mutual intersection and integration among these three industries. Regarding social and cultural values, rural commodification promoted the awareness of place in protecting ancient buildings and indigenous culture, but it also brought a sense of deprivation for community and contested rurality among different groups. The development state of rural transformation is constantly changing, and the new challenges arising from it to the rural revitalization of China, in this case, are also identified. The contribution of this article is to expand the analytical dimension of the commodification of place in rural areas and examine the state entrepreneurism associated with it. It also contributes to improving the understanding of the current development state of rural transformation in China.

The contradiction between tourism development and sustainable heritage is a topic of academic debate. Taking Hongcun village, a UNESCO World Heritage site in China, as a case study, this paper focuses on the role of resident spatial practice and provides the possibility of balance between capital-driven and sustainable development and local culture, which has important implications for the sustainable development of cultural heritage. The study used archival research, non-participatory observations, and semi-structured interviews, following Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice to analyze the practical logic of local residents who transform their dwellings to achieve the aim of landscape sustainability. This study found that in the development of Hongcun tourism, the residential landscape has been adaptively transformed at both the material and non-material levels, due to residents’ habitus and the capital brought in by tourism. This material transformation was mainly manifested in the change of residential function, the courtyard structure, and the alienation of residential space. The non-material transformation was mainly manifested in the relationships between residents and other actors. Residents who tended to conduct protection actions positively were more likely to achieve a sustainable livelihood that contributes to a sustainable cultural landscape. This paper argues that the sustainable development of heritage requires that attention be paid to the positive role of grassroots agents and practices. Bottom-up agency is the key to realizing the adaptation of living heritage to external changes.

Based on archival research, non-participatory observation, and semi-structured interviews, this paper examined waterway landscape changes mainly caused by tourism development in Hongcun, a traditional village in the Huizhou region, China, and how the locals have responded to water pollution in order to achieve landscape sustainability. It is found that the physical structure of the waterways of Hongcun Village has been well preserved, but the water pollution caused by tourism, with a combination of changes of land use and demographic structure, has changed the functions and cultural meanings of waterways. Although there remains quite a daunting task towards sustainability in terms of technology, heritage protection, and desire for development, we claim the waterways environmental governance in which local governments play a crucial role in resilience strategies by controlling the sewage from homestays, restaurants, and pigment sewage from sketches. However, the ways in which landscape animates, including the daily lives, processual daily practices, and mundane activities of different social actors related to waterways, deserve further implementation to build the resilience of cultural landscape from the perspective of non-representational theory. This paper adds to a new narrative to the waterway landscape research by presenting a water utilization pattern that could profitably coexist with a specific environment in the Huizhou region in the agricultural society of ancient China and discussing how the non-representational theory contributes to analyzing and managing waterway landscapes in modern times. It also sheds light on the connection between cultural landscape and resilience.

Under the influence of tourism and globalization, heritage production presents a new landscape. As a crucial framework for interpreting heritage, Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD) has profound significance in discussing its practice characteristics in this context. Taking cities along the Jiangsu–Zhejiang section of the Grand Canal as a case study and drawing upon policy text, this study explores the practice characteristics of AHD in the tourism context. Results indicate that the thematic practices of AHD encompass protection and management, ecological construction, cultural production and inheritance, touristification, infrastructure and services, and marketing and cooperation, forming a clustering pattern with touristification as the central theme. The spatial characteristics manifest as multi-scale practices ranging from global to regional to local, each corresponding to diverse thematic characteristics. This study deepens the understanding of AHD in tourism and advances the research progress of heritage tourism. It also provides practical references for the utilization of urban heritage and the management of heritage tourism.

Basic public services are essential to ensure regional social equity and promote regional integrated development. As the Yangtze River Delta region (YRDR) is an example of integrated regional development in China, the integration of basic public services plays a crucial role in promoting regions’ integrated development. However, little studies provide evidence of the characteristics and influencing factors of basic public services in the YRDR. Taking the YRDR as the study area, this paper constructed a comprehensive evaluation index system for the basic public services level (BPSL) in the YRDR from 2010 to 2020. Then, it measured and analyzed its spatio-temporal dynamic evolution characteristics using entropy-weighted TOPSIS and exploratory spatial data analysis methods, as well as analyzed the spatio-temporal heterogeneity of its influencing factors using a geographically and temporally weighted regression model. The results show that: (1) The BPSL in the YRDR generally improved during the study period. There was a huge variation within and between provinces in the BPSL. Over time, the BPSL gradually transitions from unipolar polarization to multipolar differentiation and a flattening trend. (2) Spatial differentiation of the BPSL was evident, with a decreasing gradient from east to west with an inverted U-shape distribution in the north–south direction. The overall spatial circle structure was characterized as being high in the east and low in the west, high in the center, and low in the north and south, forming a spatial distribution pattern of high-level and higher-level grades mainly in Shanghai, southern Jiangsu, and northern Zhejiang. The global spatial correlation characteristics became increasingly significant with time, while the local spatial correlation showed the trend of “spatial club convergence”. (3) Various factors influenced the spatial and temporal evolution of the BPSL, including the urbanization level, the economic development level, the industrial structure level, the degree of external openness, the government action capacity, and the regional population size, each of which had evident spatial and temporal heterogeneity.

Digital rural development has become an emerging dynamic force for high-quality rural development in China. This paper constructs the “environmental-economic-social” analysis framework for digital rural development, analyzes the spatial variation of the digital rural development level (DRDL) in Chinese counties in 2020, and conducts the factor detection and interaction detection of its influencing factors. It is found that: (1) digital rural development has its own unique spatial differentiation mechanism, which can be analyzed from three dimensions: environmental system, economic system, and social system, which play a fundamental role, decisive role, and a magnifying effect on digital rural development, respectively. (2) The DRDL in China’s counties has significant spatial distribution, spatial correlation, and spatial clustering characteristics. The DRDL in general shows a decreasing distribution trend from coastal to inland regions, and the overall differences in DRDL mainly come from intra-regional differences rather than inter-regional differences. The rural infrastructure digitalization dimension has stronger spatial correlation while the spatial correlation of the rural governance digitalization dimension is weaker. There are obvious hotspot and coldspot areas in the DRDL, with large differences between the coldspot and hotspot areas of different sub-dimensions. (3) The spatial divergence of the DRDL is closely related to geographical elements and is the result of the combined effect of several geographical factors. The factor detection results show that the dominant factors within the four regions are significant different. The interaction detection results show that the driving force of the two-factor interaction is stronger than that of the single-factor interaction and that the interaction among the factors further deepens the spatial differentiation of the DRDL.