Smart parcel lockers in a community of Dongchen Town, Rugao City, Jiangsu Province Photo: IC PHOTO

Integrated urban-rural development is essential to Chinese modernization. Over the past several decades, China’s large-scale, intensive, and systematic infrastructure development—such as high-speed rail, expressways, and broadband networks—has significantly improved factor accessibility between urban and rural areas. Yet institutional barriers and socio-cultural divisions have not been fully overcome. What is required, therefore, is not only “connection” and “linkage,” but also deeper “integration” and “fusion.” Infrastructure as a crucial intermediary—connecting spaces, embodying institutions, and organizing social practices—can help advance urban–rural relations from mere physical connectivity toward substantive integration.

Material foundations

The most salient attributes of infrastructure lie in its material and technological dimensions. At the macro level, infrastructure reshapes regional spatial patterns and enables a more rational allocation of resources. At the micro level, it enhances access to public services such as transportation, employment, education, and healthcare, thereby improving residents’ living conditions.

The material support provided by infrastructure not only links urban and rural social spaces but also reconstructs their modes of interaction. In the past, rural areas were often viewed primarily as sources of resources or population. The expansion of infrastructure—especially transportation and information networks—has facilitated bidirectional flows of factors between urban and rural areas, allowing rural regions to move toward more active participation in production, distribution, and consumption processes. By compressing time and space, infrastructure creates favorable conditions for the reallocation of industrial factors and more autonomous decision-making in population mobility. Urban and rural areas no longer constitute a static dichotomy; instead, they function as interconnected nodes within infrastructure networks, with their relationship becoming increasingly fluid and networked.

Relational construction

Infrastructure is not merely an objective technical system. Deeply embedded in social relations as a product of social networks and institutional arrangements, it in turn shapes social structures and patterns of resource distribution. By influencing the pathways and speeds of information, capital, and resource flows, infrastructure redefines social connections both between and within urban and rural areas, altering modes of interaction among social groups.

First, by adjusting the direction and scale of resource flows, infrastructure enables traditionally peripheral areas to access broader resources and social connections, weakening geographic divides. Second, through spatial configuration, infrastructure assigns clearer functional roles and divisions of labor to urban and rural spaces, guiding previously loose or overlapping social spaces toward more orderly differentiation. Finally, infrastructure serves as a tangible expression of state governance capacity and a key medium for the construction of social identity, influencing the sense of belonging and social imagination of both urban and rural residents.

Institutional functions

Infrastructure also operates as a spatial carrier of institutional processes and power practices. Its institutional functions are most evident in the establishment of social rules and the organization of forms of order, making it a key mechanism for institutional integration and governance restructuring in the course of urban–rural integration.

First, the downward extension of governance resources—such as information infrastructure, e-governance platforms, and service networks—to lower-tier regions has not only strengthened administrative capacity at the primary level but also expanded more equitable access to institutions. In recent years, as China has advanced the development of urban–rural digital infrastructure, access to education, healthcare, and social security has increasingly been mediated through governance systems underpinned by infrastructure, breaking down traditional administrative boundaries and resource barriers. Second, infrastructure does not merely convey state intent; it also constitutes an important fulcrum for local institutional practice. Planning and implementation are not simply engineering tasks, but processes in which policy orientation, institutional design, and social deliberation intertwine. Infrastructure projects can foster connections and cooperation between urban and rural areas, strengthening social integration and institutional trust.

Nevertheless, tensions persist. Infrastructure investment often favors hub areas and economically developed regions, potentially exacerbating regional disparities. At the same time, the standardized and technocratic nature of infrastructure development may overlook local cultural diversity and differentiated societal needs. Addressing these challenges requires transcending technological rationality and placing greater emphasis on equity and inclusiveness.

Looking ahead, infrastructure development should move beyond an engineering-centered approach and embrace a more socially oriented, institutionally grounded, and culturally adaptive perspective. In doing so, infrastructure can genuinely function as an institutional platform supporting multi-level integration and fostering shared prosperity, advancing urban–rural relations from the “connectivity of things” toward the “integration of society.”

Lu Ying is a research fellow from the Institute of State Governance at Shandong University.