Adapting to demographic changes is an essential choice and an inevitable path for Chinese modernization and rural revitalization, as stated by Du Peng and Li Ziyang in their article in the Journal of China Agricultural University (Social Sciences Edition), Issue 2, 2024.
The persistent escalation of population aging, compounded by the enduring “urban-rural reversal” phenomenon, has resulted in nearly a quarter of rural regions advancing into a super-aging society. These areas are confronted with the shared challenges of an aging workforce and talent shortage, diminished capacity for rural development, and escalating needs for elderly care services.
To tackle these challenges, super-aging rural communities are leveraging their current demographic windows of opportunity and inherent resource endowments to maintain developmental momentum. However, the regional disparities that arise from these internal resources, coupled with the uniform development paradigm often applied in rural revitalization efforts, frequently result in mismatches.
Therefore, it is necessary to explore a tailored approach to rural revitalization for super-aging areas, one that progresses through three coherent phases: securing the essentials, deepening development, and achieving urban-rural integration, each calibrated to the distinct developmental foundations of these regions.