Analysis on China’s Urban-Rural Integration: The Perspective of Path-Dependence

Abstract

With the development of the economy and society, to a certain extent, the development of the rural and the urban areas will integrate as the economic trend. The urban-rural dual structure in China has been mitigated in recent years, however, overall there are still a lot of differences between the rural and urban areas and the gap between them cannot be ignored. The integrated development of rural and urban areas is at a low level and it is confronted with the negative effects of path-dependence. They are some factors now constraining the urban-rural integration, like the governance concept of separated administration in the urban and the rural areas, the impact of the choice of the initial institution and the negative impact of the urban and the rural subject behavior. Therefore, in order to break the path-dependence of urban-rural integration, innovation is needed in the concept of governance, institutional framework, motivation system, cooperation mechanism and so on.