Governing the Rural Idyll: The Multifaceted Roles of Government in the Politics of Enhanced Commodification

ABSTRACT This article examines how government intervention shapes tourism‐led rural commodification through a dynamic and institutionally embedded process. Drawing on Mitchell's Creative Enhancement model and fieldwork in Zhoucun—a policy‐prioritized village on the rural–urban fringe of eastern coastal China—we conceptualize “enhanced commodification” as a distinct mode that departs from dominant narratives of cultural erosion and displacement. The analysis foregrounds the government's multifaceted roles as creator, facilitator, and regulator of rural transformation—positions often underemphasized in Western contexts. We identify a three‐phase trajectory of government intervention: laying the institutional groundwork for market entry, deploying spatial planning to manage landscape segmentation, and supporting preservationist actors to diffuse governance responsibilities. These interlocking stages have selectively produced commodified rurality while maintaining curated elements of the rural idyll. The findings advance a government‐orchestrated and multi‐actor interpretation of the Creative Enhancement model, emphasizing how institutional design, grassroots agency, and contingent government‐market‐society relations condition commodification outcomes. We argue that symbolic cultural practices—beyond material landscapes—play an increasingly critical role under late‐capitalist pressures on rural sustainability.