Evaluation System for Agricultural and Rural Modernization in China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is a very interesting read, and the authors have addressed an essential topic in an ambitious manner. In addition, the paper is well organised, and the research questions are both pertinent and valuable. The theoretical discussion is very important as it highlights some of the issues that need to be adequately considered and evaluated when coordinating agricultural and rural development. However, some of the contradictions between agricultural and rural development are not adequately discussed. I will elaborate on this point in my critical reflections below.
I have some critical questions that need to be answered before the paper is recommended for publication:
First, I find the ten primary indicators, which are supposed to reflect the situation and dynamics of agricultural and rural development in China, very convincing. However, as for the secondary and tertiary indicators, I am afraid that there are some questions about the components of three of the six rural development indicators (rural civilization, rural governance and coordinated development). Regarding the rural civilization indicator, I think that the secondary and tertiary indicators reflect partial characteristics of the parent indicator. I realise that it is difficult to capture all aspects of rural civilization, but it is problematic to consider education as the predominant feature in this indicator (two of the four tertiary indicators relate to education). I would suggest moving the "proportion of spending on education" to the Public Services indicator, as it has more to do with public services/infrastructure and less to do with rural civilization. I recommend enriching the Rural Civilization indicator (which could be renamed to Rural Culture for obvious reasons) by including more appropriate measures (the following are just suggestions), such as the share of non-farm occupations, the share of self-employed in the labour force, engagement in the creative arts, engagement in local initiatives, penetration of cultural activities/arts/religion, and so on.
In addition, I believe that the indicator "Number of cultural stations in towns and villages with a population of 10,000 inhabitants" excludes the smaller and very small villages. I would like to reiterate that the term "rural" includes smaller settlements that need to be taken into account. Of course, I realise that it is not so easy to analyse modernization in smaller villages, but neglecting them leads to a bias in the discussion of rural areas. I suggest to include the characteristics relevant to these smaller settlements and make it clear (in the methodological part and in the conclusion part) that you have not considered the very small villages in the regions of China. By the way, please explain: what do you mean by "cultural stations"? The fourth tertiary indicator is even more difficult to understand. What do you mean by "Proportion of civilized villages and towns at or above the country level"? I think this indicator is very abstract and not meaningful, so I suggest replacing it with a more meaningful indicator.
Another way to address small and very small villages in terms of a tertiary indicator is to include them, for example, as a proportion of the population living there, which would have a negative effect.
Second, I think the primary indicator Rural Governance is very important, but I think that when it is de-aggregated, there could be overlaps of certain tertiary indicators with those that could be included in Rural Civilization. To explain what I mean, I think that a segment of Rural Autonomy can be bracketed into Rural Civilization, as this can include characteristics of self-sufficiency/self-reliance. Therefore, I believe that the self-reliance of villagers can be included in the Rural Civilization indicator.
Also, I believe that the Rural Autonomy indicator can be changed to Local Autonomy, as it is important to highlight the potential of local governance in rural settlements that are dynamic and modernising. Therefore, the Rural Governance indicator could include tertiary indicators related to successful initiatives/projects at the local level, the percentage of rural/local governments that are more responsive to financial plans, etc.
Third, I think the Coordinated Development indicator is the most controversial indicator, although it is important for the paper. In general, I think that demographic indicators are neglected in the general evaluation system and that they can be of some use in this particular indicator. Another important point is that the positive effect (+) of the "Rural migration rate/ urbanization rate" indicator cannot be considered as part of Coordinated Development. High urbanization rate is a component of depopulation of rural areas and therefore cannot be considered as a sign of coordinated development. In my understanding, a negative (-) effect should be attributed to the "rural depopulation rate/urbanization rate" as it implies that rural areas (villages) are losing their demographic and productive capacity. The solution for Coordinated Development is to include measurements for balanced sectoral development in rural areas, rather than measurements that show a linear direction toward urbanization and industrialization. More specifically, in many rural areas in Europe, the maintenance of population (or even a slight increase in population) is a sign of revitalization. In this context, I suggest that this indicator be reconsidered more carefully, as it contains some tertiary indicators that could be moved to the Prosperity indicator.
Fourth, regarding the content of Table 2 and its description, I think there should be a more solid explanation of how it is possible to align both agricultural and rural modernization in numerical scores? Do they have a common denominator? Do they have the same value in the overall score? I think the authors need to elaborate on how they arrive at this alignment and how they balance the two components to get an integrated agricultural and rural development score. Another important criticism is that the integrated score has a strong urban bias, as explained above. I think this "urban bias" should be avoided, and it should be further explained how this paper creates this integrated indicator that replaces the previous shortcomings (as explained on page 4 (lines 152-162)).
Fifth, in the Results section (page 9), I think it should be explained in more detail what coordinated developments mean, how they are conceived, and how it is operationalized (see also my comments above).
Sixth, with respect to lines 340-344, I would like to ask how/why it is possible to measure high values for agricultural and rural development in an urban (conglomerate) context! This finding highlights a strong 'urban bias' in the agricultural and rural development scoring scheme mentioned above. Please explain why this result reflects changes in rural areas. It appears that the evaluation scheme measures the urbanization effect of agricultural and rural modernization, rather than the combined effect of agricultural and rural development in rural areas.
Seventh, please provide a title for Table 8 that does not have a proper title. This is a very minor point.
Finally, the conclusions section needs to be expanded to include and evaluate the various results in combined form. Usually the conclusions include a more detailed discussion of the results in light of the theoretical discussion at the beginning of the manuscript. I think that the connections and/or asymmetries between the theoretical discussion and the empirical results should be considered, as well as the policy implications of this evaluation scheme and the limitations of the research.
All in all, the paper needs a significant rethinking and repositioning of specific indicators in relation to the overall goal of this study. It is important that the authors provide a more successful answer to whether this evaluation scheme measures the urbanization effect of agricultural and rural modernization (which is affected by the 'urban bias') or the combined effect of agricultural and rural development in rural areas (which seemed to be the original goal of the manuscript).
I think that the paper does not have major flaws but in some paragraphs the manuscript would gain from english editing.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We are truly grateful to you for providing us with a chance to revise and resubmit our manuscript to Agriculture.
We hope that you will agree that we have addressed all the concerns in this revision. We are open to any further comments and instructions from you.
Sincerely,
Zhoufu Yan
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper presents very interesting information on the process of rural development and agricultural modernization in China, the manuscript is well written and structured. I only have a couple of comments about it.
While the paper focuses on developing an index that can measure rural development and agricultural modernization, it is important that the authors briefly discuss their identified findings. For example, why is rural development and agricultural modernization lower in the western and central provinces than in the eastern provinces?
Authors should correctly cite the references used in the main text, it is important that they review the MDPI journal's author guidelines.
Authors should justify with references the inclusion of the 10 indicators to develop the index. As well as in the classification of the stages of agricultural and rural modernization.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We are truly grateful to you for providing us with a chance to revise and resubmit our manuscript to Agriculture.
We hope that you will agree that we have addressed all the concerns in this revision. We are open to any further comments and instructions from you.
Sincerely,
Zhoufu Yan
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
1. Have analyzes been compared in other regions/countries? How is it on other continents?
2. A similar phenomenon or problem should be compared with the situation, for example, in Europe.
3. What can be the definition of modernization and modernization of the countryside? How is it understood?
4. The quality of the drawings is poor, they should be improved (they are blurred).
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We are truly grateful to you for providing us with a chance to revise and resubmit our manuscript to Agriculture.
We hope that you will agree that we have addressed all the concerns in this revision. We are open to any further comments and instructions from you.
Sincerely,
Zhoufu Yan
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
