Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book outlines a picture of growth and land use in the peri-urban areas of three of China’s most developed urban agglomerations: the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta and the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region region. It deals with literature review on the urban–rural relationship and examines the socio-economic development path of Chinese peri-urban areas. The book reviews the evolution of rural industrialization and analyzes the land-use dynamics of peri-urban areas in the three urban agglomerations. It describes the evolution of the urban–rural relationship since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 in order to provide a backdrop to understand “dual-track” urbanization: state-led and bottom-up urbanization. The book explores the rural industrialization process driven by Township–village-enterprises (TVEs) and the burgeoning industrial clusters dominated by urban states after the demise of TVEs.