Spatial restructuring through poverty alleviation resettlement in rural China Kevin Lo a , Longyi Xue b, * , Mark Wang c a Department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University, KowloonTong, Hong Kong b School of Urban and Environmental Science, Shanxi Normal University, China c School of Geography, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia article info Article history: Received 2 July 2015 Received in revised form 16 May 2016 Accepted 11 June 2016 Available online 18 June 2016 Keywords: Spatial restructuring Poverty alleviation resettlement Rural China abstract Poverty alleviation resettlement (PAR) is one of China’s key poverty reduction initiatives. Through this state-led resettlement programme, the government aims to improve the living standards and access to infrastructure and services of the rural poor. This paper examines PAR from the perspective of spatial restructuring through a household survey conducted in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces. A total of 30 resettlement sites were examined. The results show that PAR has two spatial forms: long-distance resettlement, which resettles people to cities or towns, and short-distance resettlement, which reset- tles people within the administrative boundaries of their village or to a nearby village. Furthermore, the type of spatial restructuring is an important factor shaping the outcome of resettlement. While long- distance resettlement outperforms short-distance resettlement in terms of gains in income, the advantage is offset by higher post-resettlement expenses. Furthermore, long-distance resettlers face a greater challenge in securing non-agricultural employment. Consequently, the level of satisfaction is lower among long-distance resettlers. Significant challenges remain to be addressed for both types of resettlement, including establishing two-way communication between villagers and the government about resettlement plans and providing better financial support for the resettlers, safeguards for the livelihoods of non-movers, and post-resettlement support programmes to help resettlers adjust to their new environments. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Rural China has undergone an unprecedented spatial trans- formation since the reform period began in 1978. Relevant schol- arly studies are mainly rooted in three strands of literature. The first focuses on the loss of farmland and rural habitat to urbanisation and industrialisation (Lin, 2001; Liu et al., 2010; Smith, 2014; Wang et al., 2009; Wu, 2009; Zhu et al., 2014). In this process, vast tracts of rural land, typically at the outskirts of cities, are expropriated, cleared, parcelled out by the local government, and sold to property developers (Lin and Ho, 2005; Ong, 2014; Xu et al., 2011) or used for the establishment of various types of development zones and in- dustrial parks (Yang and Wang, 2008; Zhang, 2011). At the same time, spontaneous rural industrialisation at the grassroots level has become another driver of spatial restructuring (Lin, 2001; Long et al., 2009). Although the economic contributions of these spatial restructuring processes are significant, the negative effects that involve the loss of fertile cropland, and consequently, food security are unsustainable (Chen, 2007; Deng et al., 2015). More- over, land expropriation is often involuntary from the perspective of the affected peasants, and the results are usually to their detri- ment (Chen et al., 2013; Lin and Zhu, 2014; Sargeson, 2013). In fact, the predicament of landless farmers has become a serious social problem and a common source of social unrest in China (He et al., 2009; Zhang and Donaldson, 2013). The second strand of literature focuses on spatial restructuring that results in an increase in or optimisation of farmland, and this type of spatial restructuring can be considered as a policy response to counter the negative effects of urbanisation-induced spatial restructuring. One example is the national-level land consolidation initiative, which addresses the problems of land fragmentation, cropland abandonment, and rural hollowing by concentrating rural settlements (Huang et al., 2011; Li et al., 2014; Liu et al., 2014a, 2014b; Long, 2014). Typically, a number of rural settlements are * Corresponding author. E-mail address: xly519@163.com (L. Xue). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Rural Studies journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2016.06.006 0743-0167/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Rural Studies 47 (2016) 496e505