LIAO Xiaojing DUAN Yubing DENG Hongtu
New Economy. 2026, 47(5): 5-27.
Urban-rural integration is not merely a matter of factor mobility or spatial coordination, but an institutional issue concerning the restructuring of rural production relations, organizational capacity, and income distribution. The key to overcoming the urban-rural dual structure lies not in continuing to position rural areas as passive entities subject to urban absorption, capital-driven transformation, or the inflow of production factors, but in activating the rural areas' own organizational capacity and endogenous development potential. To this end, focusing on a question with significant political-economic implications: During the process of integrated urban-rural development, how can we fully leverage capital, technology, and market forces while preventing the allocation of rural resources, the protection of farmers' rights and interests, and the distribution of surplus labor from being unidirectionally shaped by the capital-dominated logic? against the background of Chinese modernization, this paper proposes the concept of a “labor-led operating mechanism” to explain the foundational role of new rural collective economic organizations in urban-rural integration. It argues that the rise of a large number of “absentee contract holders” has detached land contracting rights from actual agricultural operation, weakened the coordinating function of collective ownership, and intensified land fragmentation, abandonment, and industrial hollowing-out. The key to resolving these problems lies not in simply relying on capital entering the countryside, but in building on rural collective land ownership, using new collective economic organizations to coordinate land, organize farmers, regulate capital embedding, and secure the subject position of farmers and collective members through arrangements of income rights and residual claims. Drawing on cases such as Dongzhenguan Village, Tunxi Village, Tiechong Township, Sanjianxi Village, and Yakou Village, the paper further shows that the labor-led operating mechanism can reduce transaction costs, improve agricultural efficiency, restrain excessive capital dominance, and provide an institutional path for addressing the structural dilemma of “no grain, no stability; no industry, no prosperity; no collective organization, no implementation” through a three-in-one structure of land coordination, organizational integration, and internalized income distribution.
