Existing studies have attempted to explain the transformation of rural China from a single productive or post-productive perspective. However, regarding the two development paradigms as binary opposites brings contradictions: Is China’s countryside evolving towards productivism or post-productivism? To answer this question, we transcend the binary opposition and instead propose an analytical framework based on rural value, driving actors, and rural land-use functions. Based on the location quotient analysis method, we measure the functional hybridity of rural areas using 7345 POIs (points of interest) representing the land-use types of productive and post-productive activities. We discuss the formation mechanism of functional hybridity considering two typical spaces: modern agriculture demonstration districts and “Tesecun”. We find that the government, the market, and villagers collectively promote the formation of functional hybridity in rural China. The government prefers to strengthen productivity in order to ensure state food security, while villagers prefer to make their villages more multi-functional in order to attract citizens. This study can be seen as a contribution supplementing research issues associated with rural China from the novel dualistic perspective of productivism and post-productivism.

China’s rural areas have long been backward in development, and many villages have completed poverty alleviation with the help of the government. Facing the requirements of sustainable development, it is necessary to change the development path, continuously increase social capital, and effectively connect with government investment resources. The existing research and practice mostly construct the strategy of social capital from the inside of the village, lacking interaction with the superior government. This paper argues for the method of planners’ intervention. The advantage is that it links the power of government and villagers, creates a perceptible, experiential, valuable material environment, and promotes collective action. Through this process, the knowledge interaction and social relations in the village can be improved. The purpose of this paper is to study how participatory planning affects the content and mechanism of this process mentioned above. Taking Hongtang village as a case study, we analyze the in-depth changes that participatory planning has brought to the rural space and social level. In the participatory planning practice of Hongtang village, college rural planners took a small vegetable garden as the breakthrough point to stimulate villagers’ participation. In the process of the upgrade, planners evolved the interaction between the village committee and villagers in the path of IMEE, which is “Intervene, Motivate, Enable, Empower”. Moreover, planners always maintained contact with the higher-level government. Through the upgrade of small vegetable gardens, the villagers’ initiative was brought into practice, the social capital was fully explored, and an effective link with the government’s resource allocation was realized.