Rural Depopulation And Its Effects On Governance

In the process of rapid urbanization of China, the rural areas, especially in remote mountainous areas are decaying, showing as depopulation phenomenon which is specifically manifested as labor and rural development resources excessive erosion, left-behind personnel aging, peasants’atomization tendency, hollow village tendency and such structural problem. Depopulation brings bigger challenge, more complexity and difficulties to rural governance, and even pushes rural governance into a dilemma.In this paper, based on individual case study on Wuhe village in Yimeng mountain area, the author systematically analyzes the formation mechanism and the representation of depopulation, then discusses how to improve rural governance structure and urbanization model, in order to overcome the negative effects of rural depopulation. Studies show that:firstly, the rural depopulation phenomenon manifested as a series of structural problems appeared in the process of rural urbanization, including population, service, family, organization, culture, and village aspects. Secondly, for the specific villages, the formation of depopulation problem has both individual and typed characteristics. This article is dedicated to exploring the formation with general and typological significance. Thirdly, the rural depopulation brings many difficulties to the rural governance, but these difficulties can be also resolved through the reconstruction of the governance path. Finally, from seven aspects including promoting the construction of small towns, the development of rural cooperative organizations, village combination, democratic governance village, migrant workers from the land, expanding the object for poverty alleviation, and promoting the urbanization of rural migrant workers, this article puts forward the concrete measures of dealing with the depopulation.