Traditional villages have reached milestones in developing a living culture, politics, economy, and society, among other aspects, while acting as important carriers of agricultural culture formed by long-term interactions between humans and nature. Unfortunately, traditional villages could disappear with the advent of urbanization. Therefore, this study enhances the accuracy of traditional village classification protection work by examining traditional villages in the Jinjiang River Basin in Quanzhou, China. A spatial pattern is extracted for the socio-ecological systems (SES) prototype of traditional villages, and an SES classification protection system is constructed based on a prototype analysis. Given the evaluation results, a K-means cluster analysis is applied to establish the SES sustainability levels for six types of traditional villages. After adjusting the types according to the principles of sustainability, equilibrium, and individual cases, six SES system types are identified: SES decay and shrinkage (Type 1), SES fusion and development (Type 2), SES ecological decline (Type 3), SES social decline (Type 4), SES ecological conservation (Type 5), and SES extensive development (Type 6). This system provides a quantitative analysis method to classify and protect concentrated and contiguous traditional villages. It also helps facilitate a better understanding of local rural society, economy, and culture, especially a deeper understanding of the interactions between humans and the rural environment.

Many developing countries are challenged with the revival of rural vitality against increasing urbanization. Rural tourism is effective in enhancing the countryside’s vitality. Previous studies used qualitative methods to explore the spatial organization of resources, but it was difficult to quantify the effective organization of tourism resources. Taking the example of Jilin Province, China, this study quantitatively measured the use of tourism resources in rural areas at the initial stage and created a developmental model to organize tourism resources more effectively. The organization mechanism has specific reference significance for the optimization model of upgrading rural tourism in developing countries. Spatial performance measurement was used to evaluate the spatial performance of rural tourism resources in the case area. The specific research included analyzing the coupling mechanism of rural tourism resources, constructing an evaluation system, analyzing a resource regulation mechanism, and establishing a rural tourism network model through a complex network analysis method and dynamic simulation. According to the spatial performance analysis, the allocation and linkage of various tourism-related elements are not yet mature. The structural restructuring mode in Jilin Province is mainly divided into internal and external dual-drive guidance, secondary integration, and a characteristic linkage mode. An organizational mechanism for optimizing tourism resources was proposed, which could be referred to for evaluating and optimally organizing the tourism resources in the rural areas of developing countries.