Multifunctional rural development in China: Pattern, process and mechanism

Multifunctional rural development provides a powerful entre ' e into understanding sustainable rural trans -formation development against the context of rapid socio-economic growth with cascading effects on human -land relations. This paper attempts to summarize the stage characteristics of the multifunctional rural devel-opment and categorize China's rural areas by using both multi-factor comprehensive evaluation method and spatial analysis. Rural areas in China were encapsulated as four functional types-agricultural production func-tion, economic development function, social security function, and ecological conservation function, and it was divided into 4 categories and 16 subcategories. The results indicated that the rural multifunctionality index presents obvious spatial heterogeneity during 2000-2015. Both the agricultural production function and social security function have shown an obvious increase, while the economic development function has much room for improvement. Recognizing the interaction between multiple functions is of great significance for implementation of strong multifunctionality pathways. The evolution of multifunctional rural is driven by both policy-oriented and market-induced forces. The results provide evidence for the cognition that multifunctionality is spatially complex, and contribute to the geography of multifunctionality.