With urbanization, the rural population in Europe and the United States is small, basically become "private farms" + "small towns (some towns are very small, the population is not comparable to a village in China)", "private farms "Precision farming", unlike the United States, the kind of "sloppy farming", the Americans have a large landholding, common barren land, more than a large machine on the battlefield, mu yield is not high. Japan's rural areas are rarely seen deserted, rural population is not much, but the people who stayed to be able to plant the land almost all planted crops.
The rural areas of Taiwan are similar to many parts of modern China, with the adult population working in the cities or outside China (including mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau) all year round, and a small population of mainly elderly people farming a small amount of land in the countryside, making the rural population almost "amphibious (urban + rural)".
The development of Korea's rural areas is somewhat similar to that of Taiwan, so I will not go into details.
The above descriptions are of the rural areas of some developed economies. The future of China's rural areas will surely see some changes, at least now we have seen that the status of Chinese farmers is superior to the status of China's urban residents, the original urban-rural difference seems to be upside down. There are still many problems in rural China compared to urban areas. Housing is less planned, commerce, health care and schools are not well covered, and there is a general lack of social security and health care for the older generation.
China's rural population of several hundred million people is an important reserve of China's labor force, many people talk about China's aging population will cause a lack of labor force, in my opinion will not occur, because our population base is still very large, if the rural areas of that a large number of people into the industrial production workforce, for fear that China's GDP in the world will reach 80%.
The biggest problem in China's rural areas is that there is too little land under cultivation, and most areas have less than 1 acre of arable land per capita. Even if this land is planted with gold, it will not be able to sustain the rural population to achieve a modern standard of living, and the trend of the rural population moving to the towns and cities is irreversible.
I believe that the future of China's rural areas will develop into decentralized residential communities, and the children who now go to school in the city will return to live in the countryside and enjoy excellent education, medical care and entertainment. Less than half of China's rural population will stay in the countryside in the future, engaging in farming, supporting the elderly and children, and serving the "rural community" of commercial, medical and recreational services. In the future, less than half of China's rural population will stay in the countryside to engage in farming, supporting the elderly and children, and serving the "rural community" in commerce, medical care, catering and entertainment, education and transportation. In the future, China's rural areas will see many entertainment plazas, many people dancing in the square and watching open-air movies. China's rural areas will not be like Europe and the United States, ultimately, our population base is too large, to all walk into the city, how many cities to accommodate? Strongly push urbanization, will certainly let China's arable land area shrink significantly.