The Perception of the City and the Village by Russian and Chinese Young Adults

Abstract

In the present-day society, the process of urbanization is often seen as one of the global tendencies that may bring about immense positive and negative changes in the lives of people. It appears that urbanization is largely associated with rural-urban migration, which may affect the economies of towns, cities, and rural areas globally. It tends to be that the youth are a significant part of this migration process. To better understand the problem, attempts have been made to investigate the factors responsible for the youth migration through revealing the attitude of the youth to modern city and village. This was done with the help of a free association experiment, focusing on similarities and differences in the city and the village perception by Russian and Chinese young people. As a result, specific socio-cultural factors and differences in the city and the village perception among the youth were revealed, some of the causes of the undergoing territorial and social transformations were identified, which may allow predicting the prospects of the city and the village development in future.