Towards High-Quality Urban–Rural Integration: Coupling Mechanisms and Optimisation Paths of Rural Revitalisation and New Urbanisation in China from the Perspective of Systems Theory

To resolve severe urban–rural contradictions and promote urban–rural integration (URI), China successively implements two national strategies: new urbanisation (NU) and rural revitalisation (RR). In Economic Geography, the URI system is one type in the human–earth interaction system, composed of urban and rural areal subsystems, and RR and NU are its two strategic driving elements. This study aims to reveal the intrinsic logic behind how RR and NU synergistically optimise the URI system’s operation and drive its evolution towards high-quality development. Combining analysis methods and synthesis methods in systems theory, this study clarifies the connotations of RR, NU, and their five complementary sub-dimensions in industry, ecology, society, space, and economy, and fully elucidates the coupling mechanisms of RR and NU, using specific cases of URI worldwide as illustrative examples. The coupling mechanisms of RR and NU include two parts: the coupling mechanisms in the above five aspects, respectively, and the cross-fusion relationships among these aspects. The coupling mechanisms reflect the dynamic process of RR and NU mobilising various other elements to optimise the URI system’s operation and evolution. Holding the systematic concept that city and village are originally a unity, three paths of dissolving the main obstacles to URI and promoting high-quality URI are proposed: reforming institutions that hinder the free flow of urban–rural factors, achieving broader and deeper urban–rural industry integration, and improving rural public service supply levels. This study constructs a theoretical framework for understanding the URI system’s driving mechanisms and evolution logic, enriching the content of URI system theory and providing implications and a reference for evaluating URI quality and formulating policies for improving URI quality.