China’s “Village-Merging and Residence-Consolidating” Policy in Practice: A Perspective from Villagers’ Experiences

The “Village-Merging and Residence-Consolidating” (VMRC) policy has been implemented in recent years across rural China as a response to various national strategies such as “Building a New Socialist Countryside”, rural revitalization, and urban-rural integration. Its key elements include moving villagers into newly established rural communities where they live in apartment buildings, demolishing their old village dwellings, and merging scattered villages into fewer ones. Given the controversial nature of this policy, it is critical to examine the actual experiences of the villagers whose life has been directly impacted by this policy. Using P Town in Shandong Province as a case study, in 2020 we interviewed and surveyed 189 households who had moved into a newly built rural community under the VMRC policy. Villagers tend to experience a decrease in life satisfaction under the VMRC-driven resettlement if they are not satisfied with the resettlement compensation package, still engage in farming activities, or experience decreasing social interactions due to the resettlement.