The Impacts, Mechanisms, and Patterns of China Rural Collective Economic Development With Common Prosperity for All

2.1 Research Background

According to China's “Rural Collective Economic Organizations Law,” rural collective economic organizations are regional economic entities based on collective land ownership; they legally represent their members in exercising ownership rights. These organizations operate under dual management systems, combining family contracting with collective management. Rural collective economic organizations exist at several levels, such as township, village, and group levels. For example, township-level collective economic organizations may focus on attracting large agricultural projects to multiple villages, village-level organizations may work together to develop and manage a village's agricultural or specialty industries, and group-level organizations may coordinate farmers within a group to address smaller production issues.

The primary task of rural collective economic organizations is to use collective-owned natural resources, such as land, forests, mountains, grasslands, tidal flats, and water bodies, and collective assets, like enterprises and infrastructure built through collective investment, to engage in production and business activities that increase collective income. Their operating methods are diverse, including collective unified, contracted, and leased management. For example, collective land can be contracted to farmers for cultivation, or collective assets can be leased to enterprises to generate rental income. In addition, collective economic organizations can invest funds by purchasing enterprise shares.

The profits of rural collective economic organizations are typically used to construct public services, improve infrastructure, and distribute income among members. For example, collective income can be used to build village roads, improve water and electricity facilities, or even provide welfare to villagers. The economic benefits are reflected in appreciation in the value of collective assets and profit distribution. However, more importantly, they enhance the overall development of rural areas through collective management and resource sharing, allowing villagers to share in economic outcomes and improve their production and living conditions. Therefore, rural collective economies are not only intended to create economic benefits; they also serve as important pathways for rural social management, resource sharing, and achieving common prosperity.

In recent years, the scale, assets, and income of rural collective economies have gradually increased, with the amount of dividends rising correspondingly. According to the China Rural Policy and Reform Statistical Yearbook, in 2015, of the 604,000 villages nationwide, 244,000 (40%) had established village-level collective economic organizations. By 2020, out of 560,000 villages across the country, 532,000 (95%) had established such organizations. By 2022, approximately 960,000 collective economic organizations had been established at the township, village, and group levels. Additionally, from 2012 to 2020, the net assets of village collective economic organizations increased from 1.3 trillion yuan to 3.7 trillion yuan, with the average net assets per village rising from 2.22 million yuan to 6.86 million yuan. From 2012 to 2022, the total income of village-level collective economic organizations increased from 357.69 billion yuan to 671.14 billion yuan. Finally, by the end of 2020, the cumulative dividends distributed by rural collective economic organizations that had completed property rights reforms amounted to 408.5 billion yuan, of which 335.3 billion yuan (82.1%) was distributed to the members of the collective economic organizations, and 61.4 billion yuan (15%) was retained within the organizations.

2.2 Mechanism

The most arduous task of promoting common prosperity is in the countryside (Xi 2021). The quality of rural collective economic development is directly related to whether farmers in rural areas can achieve common prosperity. This study attempts to explain the internal mechanism through which rural collective economic development drives farmers' income growth and achieves common prosperity from three aspects: improving rural human capital, the benefit distribution mechanism, and the industrial development level. The logic behind choosing these three mechanisms is as follows. First, developing collective economies can entice migrant labor to return. Not only do these returning workers bring material capital, they also introduce new technologies and employment concepts, effectively enhancing the local labor force's skills and productivity, thereby increasing farmers' incomes. Second, industrial development in the context of collective economic growth creates more job opportunities for farmers, raising their income levels. Finally, developing collective economies enables collective organizations to generate more profits, a portion of which are redistributed to farmers through dividends, increasing their transfer income and further boosting their overall income. These three mechanisms provide different pathways for increasing farmers' income: enhancing human capital, creating job opportunities, and optimizing income distribution.

Developing rural collective economies can promote farmers' income growth by enhancing a village's human capital. Rural economic development effectively encourages migrant workers to return (Rogers 1983; Dustmann et al. 1996; Hausmann and Nedelkoska 2018). As a rural collective economy continues to grow and infrastructure improves, an increasing number of migrant workers choose to return home for employment. In areas where the collective economy is more developed, collective economic organizations are typically able to provide returning labor with more job opportunities and more attractive income levels. Human capital in rural areas is significantly enhanced when migrant workers return. These migrant workers not only bring back capital but also the technologies, management experience, and modern production methods they accumulated elsewhere, injecting new vitality into local industry and economic growth (Dustmann et al. 2011; Adda et al. 2022). Moreover, the human capital of returning migrant workers has an expansion effect, effectively improving local residents' human capital (Santos and Postel-Vinay 2003). For example, returning migrant workers may become involved in emerging local industries such as rural tourism, specialty agriculture, and e-commerce, which require a highly skilled workforce and can better promote diversification and high-quality rural economy development. Additionally, local workers can learn new work skills and employment concepts from returning migrant workers, further enhancing the village's human capital. Ultimately, through this mechanism, rural collective economies not only provide better income opportunities for farmers but also enhance the rural labor force's overall quality and productivity, further promoting rural economic growth and common prosperity.

A good profit distribution mechanism can effectively protect reasonable rights and interests while achieving stable income growth for all farmers. General Secretary Xi Jinping highlighted that common prosperity refers to the material and spiritual prosperity of all people, not just that of a few people or uniform egalitarianism. Since the Fifth Plenary Session of the Nineteenth Central Committee, the central government has clarified the basic ideas and policy orientations for achieving the goal of common prosperity. Efforts to make the “cake” of national income bigger is the premise; scientific distribution of this “cake” is the key (Podder and Chatterjee 2002; Chen 2022). Therefore, we must improve the interest linkage mechanism to turn “resources into assets, capital into shares, farmers into shareholders” and involve farmers as much as possible (Xi 2022). Equity allocation and share cooperation are important ways to distribute benefits. Through dividends based on shares, group assets and income from collective management are quantified for individuals, and the ownership relationship between collective members and collectives can be clarified. Lu (2022) took Bao Village in Sichuan Province as an example to explain that collective economic development can better handle the relationship between collective public accumulation and individual welfare distribution. Developing a collective economy adheres to the principle of prioritizing efficiency and considering equity in individual distribution. This avoids “eating a big pot of rice” and egalitarianism while preventing excessive concentration of wealth and widening of the gap between the rich and poor. Furthermore, using Hesilu Village Cooperative as an example, Wang and Jin (2022) suggested that turning villagers into stockholders enables villagers to share in the cooperative's development achievements, as individuals with higher subscription shares receive more benefits. The social solidarity of collective interests leads villagers to spontaneously attach importance to and support village development. The collective economy can help farmers truly become the industrial community's main force by improving the benefit distribution mechanism, farmers' participation, and benefit sharing level, further realizing farmers' common prosperity (Cohen and Uphoff 1980).

Industrial prosperity is the cornerstone of rural revitalization—the power source and material basis for common prosperity of the farmers in the countryside (Zhang and Du 2022). China has yet to form a modern rural industrial system. Moreover, the production efficiency of the primary industries in rural areas is not high, production methods are relatively behind, the secondary industry's production technology is backward, and the tertiary industry's development lags even more (Jiang and Chen 2018). From the perspective of the primary industry's development, the degree of mechanization, specialization, marketization, and scale of agricultural production is becoming increasingly higher, while agricultural production's dependence on capital investment is growing deeper (Gong 2018). Thus, the disadvantages of traditional small farmer agricultural production are becoming more apparent. Therefore, rural collective economic organizations are required to assume more production and management functions. The diversified social services provided by the collective economy, such as trusteeship, contract farming, and purchasing agricultural social services and other credit agricultural management methods, have become meaningful ways to realize the organic connection between small farmers and modern agriculture (Chen 2022).

Zhong and Wu (2022) studied village X in Heilongjiang Province and found that valuable references for exploring the transition from industrial poverty alleviation to industrial prosperity can be provided by giving full play to village collectives' coordinating function in industrial poverty alleviation, developing a new collective economy, and building an embedded agricultural industrialization business pattern led by village collectives. From the perspective of industrial integration, a rural collective economy's development is conducive to extending the industrial chain and integrating the three industries in rural areas. Wang et al. (2022) used symbiosis theory to analyze the development process of rural industrial integration in Yuanjia Village, Shanxi Province. They concluded that integrating the three rural industries with farmers' cooperatives as the carrier creates a symbiotic state and path for integrating “professional cooperative union-new market subject relationship-industrial aggregation.” Furthermore, Ye (2021) took District F of Shanghai's policy experience as an example and revealed that developing rural collective economies in metropolis suburbs could realize the mutual embedding and integration of urban and rural economies through a “systematic integration” approach. Finally, integrated development of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries in rural areas is a critical way to realize the organic connection between small farmers and modern agriculture, promote the flow of urban and rural elements, enhance the vitality of agricultural and rural development, and promote the common prosperity of farmers and rural areas (Xiao et al. 2022).

3.1 Data Source and Descriptive Statistics

We utilized the 2019 and 2021 waves of the CTVS to assess the impact of rural collective economic development on household income. The CTVS, launched in 2008 by the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, employed fixed-point and hometown survey strategies. Thirty survey teams conducted the former strategy, and every survey team was assigned a fixed-point research county selected from 22 provinces across China. In each research county, 10 representative villages were randomly selected, with 24 farmers surveyed in each county. The hometown survey method involved a team of students who returned to their hometowns during summer breaks. Each wave addresses different survey themes. For instance, the themes for 2019 and 2021 focused on rural education development and rural industrial revitalization, respectively. Each wave gathered a wide range of data, including rural development, agricultural production, farm household income, consumption, and household members' employment. This comprehensive data set served as a reliable foundation for our study. We excluded villages without rural collective operating incomes, yielding a total of 6266 valid households across 452 sampled villages.

Table 1 summarizes the main variables used in this analysis. Of the 969 village samples, only 46.65% of them had collective operating income; these villages were included in our analysis sample. Among the 452 villages with operating income, their average total collective operating income was 2.314 million yuan, with the highest at 140 million yuan. About 81.04% of these sample villages considered their rural economic development at a local medium or higher level. The average household income of our sample households was 83.476 thousand yuan per year, 21.13% higher than the villages without rural collective operating income.

3.2 Empirical Strategy

In this model, the subscripts $${i}$$, $$j$$, and$$\,t\,$$represented household, village, and time, respectively. The dependent variable $$\mathrm{ln}({{hhinc}}_{{ijt}})$$ is the logarithm of household income, including total household, operating, salary, property, and transfer income. The independent variable $${\mathrm{ln}({CEI}}_{{it}})$$ is the logarithm of the rural collective operating income of village $$j$$. Parameter $$\beta $$ is the regression coefficient, indicating that for every 1% rise in rural collective operating income, household income would change by $$\beta $$ percentage points. Based on the theoretical analysis in Section 2, we expected$$\,\beta $$ would be significantly positive. $${X}_{{it}}$$ and $${X}_{{jt}}\,$$are a set of control variables. $${X}_{{it}}$$ represents household characteristics, including household size (Hukou population$$\,{hh\_hkpop}$$ and migrants $${hh\_migpop}$$), an index of village cadre ($${hh\_villcadre}$$, Yes = 1), and the age ($${head\_age}$$), gender ($${head\_gender}$$, male = 1), education years ($${head\_eduy}$$) and health conditions ($${head\_health}$$, best = 1, worst = 5) of the head of household. $${X}_{{jt}}$$ denotes the village characteristics, including the index of the village landscape ($${landscape}$$), and location ($${suburb}$$, Yes = 1; $${township}$$, 1 if located near the town hall). $${\delta }_{j}$$ and $${\delta }_{t}$$ denote the village province and time-fixed effects, respectively. $${\varepsilon }_{{ijt}}$$ is the random error term. All standard errors were robust.

This study encountered potential endogeneity issues from two primary sources. First, unobservable factors such as productivity shocks and household capabilities could influence development of rural collective economies and household income levels. Second, reverse causality may exist between the growth of rural collective economies and household income. For instance, while production factors tend to migrate toward areas with high productivity and income levels, this unidirectional flow could trigger agglomeration effects, further enhancing regional production efficiency and labor income. Consequently, the endogeneity problems arising from omitted variables and reverse causality may lead to biased estimates.

We address these endogeneity problems by exploiting the instrumental variable (IV) regression method. Referring to Meng et al. (2011), we adopted the number of hamlets (Zi ran cun) in an administrative village as the instrumental variable for developing a rural collective economy. This IV satisfies both the correlation and exogeneity conditions. First, the number of hamlets in a village is closely related to the rural collective economy. Developing a rural collective economy requires adequate resource endowment and capital accumulation. An administrative village composed of more hamlets will have more abundant land, labor, and productive fixed assets to develop its rural collective economy. Second, a hamlet is formed naturally by the settlement of villagers over a long period. The number of hamlets is determined by factors such as the village's historical topography, resources, and climate. However, these factors do not influence the current household income level, thus meeting the exogeneity requirements of an IV.

4.1 Main Results

Table 2 reports the average effect of rural collective economic development on household income. All estimates are based on robust standard errors. We start by only controlling for province-fixed effects. Column (2) adds year-fixed effects to eliminate the influence of the general macroeconomic environment; the estimated collective economic effect remains almost the same but very small. In columns (3) and (4), we further control for household and village characteristics, respectively, to reduce the interference of these factors in the estimation; the coefficients become even smaller but remain significant. According to our analysis in Section 3.2, serious endogeneity problems exist in these specifications, so these coefficients are small and inconsistent with our intuition. Next, column (5) presents the IV estimation results, showing that rural collective operating income still has a significantly positively effect on total household income. The specific impact is 0.308; thus, for every 10% increase in rural collective operating income, the village's total household incomes will increase by 3.08 percentage points. The coefficients of the instrumental variable are larger than those in column (4), indicating that if endogeneity is ignored, the true effects are underestimated. Moreover, the F-statistic value of the weak instrumental variable test is 139.815, much greater than 10, indicating that the column (5) results are credible. Therefore, we use the IV approach in the following analysis to further confirm this result.

Total household income comprises operating, wage, property, and transfer incomes, leading us to further explore how rural collective economic development affects different types of household income. The regression results appear in Table 3. Column (1) is our baseline result, as in column (5) of Table 2. Columns (2)–(5) report the effects of rural collective economic development on operating, wage, property, and transfer incomes, respectively, implying that rural collective economic development raises total household income by increasing their operating, wage, and property incomes, with greater contributions to the increase in operating and property incomes. Specifically, each 10% increase in rural collective operating income contributes to increases of 2.59% in farm household operating income, 1.13% in wage income, and 3.09% in property income. These results are further elaborated in Section 5.

4.2 Heterogeneity Analysis

China has a definitive problem of uneven regional and urban-rural development. Regions and urban-rural areas differ in their economic development environments, rural resource endowments, and factor allocation capacities, which may cause variations in how rural collective economic development affects household income among regions. Moreover, the differences in the effects of the scale and type of collective economic development among villages also require clarification. Therefore, this section explores the heterogeneous effects of the regional, urban-rural, and rural collective economy sizes and types to provide more precise evidence for policy formulation.

The empirical results in Table 4, Columns (1)–(3) of Panel A report the differences in impact across regions, while columns (4) and (5) report the differences in impact between urban and rural areas. Due to the different sample sizes of these specifications, the size of the regression coefficients cannot reveal the different effects; therefore, we infer the heterogeneous effects by the changes in regression significance degrees across groups. Panel A shows that rural collective economic development significantly affects household incomes in the eastern and western regions but the effect in the central region is not significant. This is because the eastern region is relatively more economically developed, allowing rural collective economies to leverage better infrastructure, stronger capital accumulation, and more abundant resource conditions, thereby generating a greater income-increasing effect. Meanwhile, in the western region, national policies have resulted in collective economies receiving more investment and resource support, thus also contributing to increases in farmer incomes (Jia et al. 2020).

We also find a more significant impact of rural collective economic development on household income in rural areas, with a weakly significant effect on the income increase in suburban households. Altogether, the marginal impact of rural collective economic development is more evident in the household incomes in areas with lower economic development levels. This difference is mainly due to variations in the employment structures of rural and suburban households. Rural households primarily rely on agricultural production and land resources for income. By comparison, through forms such as collective management and cooperatives, rural collective economies optimize land resource allocation, improve agricultural efficiency, provide more employment opportunities, and distribute more income to farmers, thereby significantly increasing rural household income levels. However, the economic structures in suburban areas are more diversified, and nonagricultural industry development is more mature. Residents' income sources do not solely depend on land or agricultural economies but also come from other channels, such as employment in urban areas. Therefore, collective economies have relatively limited impact on suburban household incomes.

Panel B presents the differences in the effects of rural collective economic characteristics, where columns (1) and (2) report the heterogeneous effect of rural collective economic size, while columns (3)–(5) report the differences in effects based on rural collective economic types. Panel B indicates that large-scale rural collective economies more significantly increase farmers' incomes than small-scale rural collective economies. This finding indicates that collective economies can play a role in promoting farmers' income only when they have a certain amount of capital accumulation. This is mainly because large-scale collective economies typically have stronger capital accumulation and resource integration capabilities. As the scale expands, collective economies can effectively integrate resources like land, labor, and capital to carry out large-scale operations, improve production efficiency, and enhance economic benefits, thereby increasing farmers' incomes. Moreover, larger-scale collective economies are more likely to attract policy support and external investment. These funds and support help drive expansion and industrial upgrading, further raising farmers' income levels.

The forms of rural collective economic organizations can be divided into three main types: economic cooperatives, share-hold cooperatives, and collective shareholding enterprises. Among these, both economic and share-hold cooperatives are rural collective-operated economic organizations. The main difference between them is that collective operational assets are not quantified into shares or stakes for the collective members in an economic cooperative. In contrast, collective shareholding enterprises refers to collective assets participating in business operations through equity investment. The results show that rural collective economies in the form of economic cooperatives have the most significant impact on household incomes, followed by share-hold cooperatives and collective shareholding enterprises.

The income-increasing effects differ among the forms of rural collective economic organizations, primarily due to variations in resource allocation, management models, income distribution, and farmer participation. First, economic cooperatives tend to have more direct and flexible income-increasing effects. Economic cooperatives usually rely on direct labor participation by households or individual members, with farmers earning income directly from collective business activities. Cooperative members can increase collective production efficiency by jointly managing and sharing resources, thereby raising individual incomes. Since economic cooperatives do not quantify collective assets into shares or stakes, member participation is more flexible and directly linked to collective production activities. This provides more direct income sources and leads to more significant income-increasing effects. In contrast, the income-increasing effects of shareholding cooperatives are somewhat less pronounced than those of economic cooperatives. Share-hold cooperatives allocate collective assets into shares or stakes, with farmers sharing in the profits of collective economic activities based on their shareholding ratios. In the rural collective equity cooperative form, household income is related to the membership and decision-making rights granted by the rural collective. However, the current dilemma of unclear villagers' membership rights reduces the collective economic development effects. Finally, the income-increasing effect of collective shareholding enterprises is relatively the weakest. In collective equity participation enterprises, collective assets are invested in external businesses in the form of shares, and farmers' incomes primarily come from dividends or profit-sharing. However, this form of collective economic organization is typically led by external enterprises, with farmers having limited participation in business management and decision-making. Consequently, the income source is relatively indirect and depends on the enterprise's business performance. Therefore, farmers' incomes increase more slowly, and direct motivation and control in collective economic activities is lacking. Thus, the direct income-increasing effect of collective shareholding enterprises is relatively weak.

4.3 Robustness Checks

Robustness tests are conducted by replacing key variables and changing the study sample; these results are reported in Table 5. We first substitute the key independent variable. Column (1) reports the regression results after substituting the log of rural collective economic operating income in the baseline regression with the log of rural collective economic income per capita. The effect remains positive and significant. Second, in columns (2) and (3), we replace the dependent variable household annual total income with the log of the village's income per capita and log of household electricity expenditure, respectively. The results show that the coefficients do not change significantly, while both remain significantly positive at the 1% significance level. Finally, we change the study sample. To exclude the influences of extreme income on the results, we winsorize the top and bottom 1% and truncate 5% of the independent and dependent variables, respectively. The results in columns (4) and (5), respectively, show no significant change in the coefficients, which remain significantly positive at the 1% significance level. These results indicate the robustness of our finding that developing a collective economy can increase household income.

5.1 Labor Allocation

By developing and utilizing rural contracted land, housing land, construction land, social and cultural resources, and natural scenery resources, villages attract local and external capital to develop their collective economy. This process promotes households to reallocate family labor resources, thus changing household incomes. We use the ratio of the resident household population to the Hukou population as a proxy for household labor allocation. Table 6 shows the results of analyzing the mechanism of household labor allocation. Column (1) suggests that developing a collective economy increases the ratio of the resident household population to its Hukou population. Assuming household size remains unchanged, developing a rural collective economy can entice migrants to return and increase a village's labor force, further promoting the collective economy's vitality while forming a positive feedback mechanism to raise household income. This mechanism explains why a rural collective economy contributes more to improving household operating income levels. Return laborers use the capital and human capital they accumulated elsewhere to start their own businesses, increasing household operating income.

The results of examining the heterogeneity of the mechanisms appear in columns (2)–(4). We find that the labor allocation capacity of a collective economic development is more substantial for villages in the plains and non-suburban areas. This is also true for larger rural collective economies, the household economic cooperative form, and household joint-share cooperative form in rural collective economies.

5.2 Industrial Development

Villages generally promote developing rural collective economies by cultivating industries, such as the agricultural processing industry, secondary industries, and rural tourism services. New industries bring more nonagricultural employment opportunities and increase the wage income of nearby households. We use the number of firms in a village as a proxy variable for rural industrial development, and Table 7 shows the results of analyzing the rural industrial development mechanism. Column (1) indicates that developing a collective economy can increase the number of firms in a village, which is why rural collective economies contribute more to increasing household wages and property income.

The results of testing the heterogeneity of the mechanism are reported in columns (2)–(4). They show that developing a rural collective economy can significantly promote industrial development in the plains and suburban areas, as well as in larger rural collective economies, household joint-share cooperatives, and rural collective equity cooperatives.

5.3 Revenue Distribution

Developing a rural collective economy generates operating income, so when operating income reaches a certain scale, collective members receive dividends, increasing their total household income. Therefore, we use whether a village pays dividends as a proxy variable for rural collective economic revenue distribution. Table 8 reports the results of the mechanism analysis. Column (1) indicates that developing a collective economy can increase the likelihood that village households will receive dividends, which explains why rural collective economies contribute more to the increase in household property income.

The heterogeneity results of the mechanism analysis appear in columns (2)–(4), showing that developing a rural collective economy can significantly increase the likelihood that rural households in the plains and suburban areas will receive dividend income. However, it decreases the likelihood that rural collective equity cooperatives will share dividends. One possible reason is that such collective economic organizations are larger and require more investment capital to sustain further operations and enterprise development. Therefore, they keep more collective operating revenue as retained earnings, which reduces the possibility that the organization's members will receive dividends.

6.1 Natural Scenery Development Pattern: Shangzhantou Village and Hou'an Village

The natural scenery development pattern refers to making full use of a village's natural landscape resources, building beautiful villages with natural environments, and rural tourism projects such as village scenic spots, agritainments, and homestays. An economic pattern that integrates the primary and tertiary industries is formed by turning lucid waters and lush mountains into invaluable assets. Typical villages include Shangzhantou Village, Anke New Village, and Hou'an Village.

Shangzhantou Village is located in Yuhuan City in the south of Taizhou in east China. The administrative village has jurisdiction over five hamlets and 51 villager groups, with a total of 360 households and a registered population of 1,035. It used to be an economically weak village subsisting on fishing. In 2018, it raised funds through the share structure of “villagers 49% + village collective 51%” and registered and established Zhejiang Zhantou Fishing Village Tourism Development Co. Ltd. The company uses the funds raised to restore and preserve traditional buildings such as stone house buildings, ancient archways, and porta docks. In addition, it builds urban recreation projects such as a “glass suspension bridge,” a “sky mirror,” and a “time tunnel,” creating a rural tourism industry that integrates culture and leisure. Currently, it attracts 150,000 tourists annually. In 2020, the village's net tourism income reached 2 million yuan, and villagers who became shareholders received dividends. Shangzhantou Village created the “4951” share crowdfunding cooperation as a characteristic collective economic pattern, turning the village's resources into assets, transforming the village into a scenic spot, and increasing farmers’ incomes.

Shangzhantou Village was lifted out of poverty because it is “near the sea,” while Hou'an Village achieved prosperity because it is “near the mountain.” Hou'an Village fully uses the mountainous areas’ advantages to develop featured farm caravans, ecological leisure, and rural residential industry. Hou'an Village is part of Tiantai County in the northwest of Taizhou City and is located on the southern foot of Longshan Mountain. The village has only one hamlet, consisting of six groups of villagers, with 545 households and a total of 1727 villagers. Before 2011, Hou'an Village made its living mining stones; however, many villagers suffered from stone lung disease due to the harsh mining environment. Later, under the leadership of migrant workers returning home, they changed the pattern from “selling stones” to “protecting the ecology,” relying on the beautiful natural scenery to develop farm caravan entertainment. After five rounds of investments, more than 80 farm caravans in Hou'an Village can currently satisfy 6000 people dining simultaneously. Now, village tourism companies are responsible for unified publicity, service standards, internal management, and customer distribution. The village's collective economic income has reached 5.28 million yuan, and farmers’ per capita annual income has increased from 6000 yuan in 2011 to 50,683 yuan in 2020, forming a “Hou'an pattern” of “Rural + Company + Farmer,” a model village for developing agritainment in Zhejiang Province.

6.2 Rural Culture Development Pattern: Shatan Village, Zhangsi Village

The rural culture development pattern refers to constructing historical, cultural, and central villages as carriers to create rural humanistic tourist attractions. They increase the economic income of village collectives and households by protecting and developing rural historical and cultural resources while repairing and maintaining ancient buildings. Typical villages are Shatan Village and Zhangsi Village.

Shatan Village and Zhangsi Village are characterized by turning ancient villages into rural tourism with folk culture. Shatan Village is located in the Huangyan District in the middle of Taizhou City, built along a stream with the characteristics of a typical river town in South China. Its history spans more than 800 years. The village has 326 households, with a registered population of 1223. In 2013, taking advantage of the opportunity provided by beautiful villages and rural revitalization construction policies, Shatan Village invited professor Yang from Tongji University to discuss village construction and development planning. Consequently, the village made full use of the existing old buildings and transformed the abandoned veterinary stations, granaries, village offices, and other buildings into tourist distribution centers, homestays, tea kiosks, and wineries. In 2015, the village registered a joint-stock economic cooperative of Shatan Village, Yutou Township, Huangyan District, Taizhou City, to manage and operate the village tourism industry. Shatan Village has attracted 300,000 tourists yearly, and tourism's annual output value has reached more than 27 million yuan.

Similarly, Zhangsi Village focuses on rural cultural tourism. Zhangsi Village belongs to Tiantai County in the northwest of Taizhou City and consists of four hamlets and 20 villager groups, with 958 farming households and 3,200 registered villagers. Zhangsi Village has a history of over 700 years. After 2009, the village's collective organization reverted old houses to the village collective assets and carried out uniform repairs and maintenance. After the restoration, 13 buildings were listed as cultural protection organizations. Zhangsi Village attracted government investment of 60 million yuan, more than 3000 villagers invested 40 million yuan, and the sage Chen Yiping invested 100 million yuan to establish the ZongYuan Academy in 2020. The village promotes folk crafts such as wearing coir raincoats, weaving bamboo hats, and crafting straw sandals and wood carvings with dragon and lion dances. It also develops farmhouses and homestays; its 18 existing farmhouses and homestays receive 600,000 visitors annually. At the same time, the land has been used to build in-depth experience projects such as Happy Farm, Children's Paradise, Mincemeat Corridor, and fruit tree picking, which have significantly increased villagers’ income. In 2020, its household per capita annual income reached 43,141 yuan.

6.3 Land Resources Leasing Pattern: Houzhuang Village and Shanqian Village

The land resources leasing pattern refers to guiding and supporting village collectives to use collectively owned nonagricultural construction land or village-reserved land to build standard factory buildings, professional markets, storage facilities, and employee living facilities while increasing village collective income through property leasing and operation. Typical villages are Houzhuang and Shanqian Villages.

Houzhuang and Shanqian Villages are part of the Huangyan District, Taizhou City, and are located on the city's outskirts. Shanqian Village contains two hamlets, with 555 households and 1873 registered villagers. Houzhuang Village consists of three hamlets with 567 households and 2,001 registered villagers. The two villages rely on the mold industry in the Huangyan District to expand their collective economy and develop the rental and retail industry. They have transformed the collectively reserved land into shops leased to automobile and motorcycle cities, 4S stores, and small and micro enterprises. The two villages annually gain 3 and 5 million yuan in economic benefits from renting shops, respectively. In addition, driven by the mold industry, every family in Shanqian Village has set up a private enterprise engaged in processing and manufacturing daily plastic necessities, clothing, shoes, and hats; the village's annual sales income is nearly 50 million yuan. In 2020, the average household per capita incomes of Houzhuang Village and Shanqian Village reached 51,941 yuan and 64,781 yuan, respectively.

6.4 Rural Industrial Development Pattern: Fanglin Village and Yanggen Village

The rural industrial development pattern refers to combining rapid development of a village-level collective economy, promoting agricultural construction, increasing the village-level collective economy's income, and promoting industrial development. Typical villages are Fanglin Village and Yanggen Village.

Fanglin Village is located in the urban area of Luqiao County, Taizhou City, with 271 families and 1,028 registered residents. Fanglin Village was established from the old machinery and equipment market in 1984. It is now the Fanglin Group, which has developed various industries such as Fanglin Auto City, a second-hand car market, and second-hand equipment trading market. These industries provide a platform for villagers to start their own businesses. By promoting village cadres, Fanglin Village has made “assets into equity, farmers as shareholders,” which has effectively stimulated the vitality of rural development and broadened the channels through which farmers can increase their incomes. In 2021, the villagers' equity income distribution was 49,000 yuan per share. At the same time, Fanglin Village has led the villagers to common prosperity and established a development-sharing alliance, driving five nearby villages to common prosperity through land project cooperation while promoting its collective economy to increase annual income by millions of yuan.

Yanggen Village differs from Fanglin Village's use of resources and market advantages to develop secondary and tertiary industries. Yanggen Village relies on the unique pomelo planting conditions and long planting history to extend the agricultural value chain, developing a Wendan (a kind of pomelo) picking experience while telling pomelo stories to nurture Wendan themed rural tourism. Yanggen Village is located in the eastern part of Qinggang Town, Yuhuan City, with eight hamlets, 20 villager groups, 680 households, 2071 registered denizens, and mu of arable land. Since 1983, some villagers in Yanggen Village have developed a wasteland to plant Wendan. With its unique soil quality and mild climate, the pomelo cultivation area in Yanggen Village has grown from the original 120 mu to more than 2100 mu, and over 95% of the villagers depend on pomelo for their living. The village has now formed a large-scale, systematic, production, processing, and income-generating Wendan industry chain with the “Yanggen Wendan” geographical landmark brand of agricultural products. It has also carried out rural tourism projects such as Wendan picking and Wendan cultural and creative product development. Yanggen Village's development pattern has achieved a certain degree of success. In 2020, the entire village's total income was 5 million yuan. The Wendan planting area in Yanggen Village was 2200 mu. In 2019, the actual production of Wendan was 8000 tons, with an output value of 40 million yuan. Villagers’ annual incomes range from 60,000 to 300,000 yuan.