Rural restructuring in Southwest China: Is change driven by targeted poverty alleviation?

Targeted poverty alleviation (TPA) has effectively addressed the problem of absolute poverty in rural China. However, the rural restructuring resulting from this unconventional model of antipoverty and the sustainability of this restructuring need to be further tested. This study develops an analytical framework for the multidimensional transition of rural areas from the perspective of collaborative governance for poverty with multiple actors. We test our framework with a case study of Danzhai County, China. The results indicate that antipoverty actors created a benefit linkage mechanism for poor villagers through comprehensive land consolidation and the development of featured industries and cooperative societies and finally ended the traditional small-scale peasant economy system; however, the impact of TPA is still controversial because of issues such as elite capture in rural restructuring and the sustainability of industry in the postpoverty era.