Rethinking the Evolution of China’s Urban–Rural Relations: A Dynamic Institutional–Technological–Cognitive Framework

The SDGs and the New Urban Agenda both stress the importance of strengthening urban–rural linkages to promote balanced and inclusive development. Taking China as a case, this paper explores the underlying mechanisms driving the evolution of urban–rural relations. Existing studies have primarily periodized China’s urban–rural relations based on institutional changes, with limited attention to their endogenous evolutionary mechanisms. Drawing on New Institutional Economics, this study develops an “institutional–technological–cognitive” framework. It argues that China’s urban–rural relations have evolved through three stages: prior to the Reform and Opening-Up, institution-led governance resulted in urban–rural separation; in the 1980s–2010s, technological change reshaped the constraints and return structures of factor flows, resulting in urban–rural imbalance; in the 2010s–the present, early urban–rural integration was marked by tensions between cognitive reconstruction and existing institutional arrangements. Throughout the three stages, cognition has evolved from ideological cognition to opportunity-driven cognition and further to value-driven cognition, with its agency continuously strengthening and gradually becoming a key variable influencing the effectiveness of institutional operations and the pathways of technological empowerment. Accordingly, urban–rural relations should be understood not only as the outcome of factor allocation shaped by institutions and technology, but also as a dynamic structure embedded in the evolution of cognition. The advancement of urban–rural integration should place greater emphasis on people-centered cognitive transformation, rather than relying on improvements in factor mobility or population urbanization.