ABSTRACT
Enormous changes have taken place in the number, structure, and distribution of China's rural population since the start of the 21st century. The three demographic changes in China's rural population – a decline in the total number of rural people, the rapidly aging population, and the concentrations in certain towns – have a fundamental impact on the social and economic development of rural areas in the future. They provide the context for the initiative of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way in rural areas. This chapter seeks to forecast the future structure and number of China's rural population in the year 2020. Based on its conclusions, it then proposes three specific "pathways" toward dealing with future changes in China's rural population and its labor force. These are to modernize the mode of agricultural production, improve the geographic distribution of the population, and improve the quality of the rural labor force.
