What role does land consolidation play in the multi-dimensional rural revitalization in China? A research synthesis

With the rural revitalization strategy was proposed in 2017, large-scale land consolidation has been carried out in rural areas of China, which has profoundly impacted rural development and sustainability. To assess the multi-dimensional effects of land consolidation on rural revitalization, an evaluation system was constructed following the proposed "target-indicator-outcome" framework and subsequently applied to 193 cases documented in 92 peer-reviewed articles for a systematic review and meta-analysis. The results indicate that rural land consoli-dation had played more positive than no/negative roles in facilitating rural revitalization, with cases reporting generally positive outcomes accounting for 74%. Considering four targets of rural revitalization, positive effects were statistically significant in the case of Prosperous Life and Industrial Prosperity, with positive cases ac-counting for 86% and 79%. However, the positive effects in terms of Ecological Livability and Rural Civilization & Effective Governance is statistically non-significant, with positive cases accounting for 65% and 47%. In terms of 12 indicators, an overview of the positive and no/negative effects brought by land consolidation were sum-marized. The cases of the indicators related to rural producting and living were largely positive, however, the indicators related to rural ecology, rural civilization and governance reported higher no/negative outcomes. From the perspective of spatial differentiation, the positive effects were significant in eastern, central and western China, and the proportion of positive cases in eastern China (80%) and western China (77%) were higher than those in central China (67%). The opportunities and threats of rural land consolidation in multi-dimension deserve policy attention in rural revitalization strategy.