Rural settlements usually includes 4 main parts: isolated areas, hamlets, villages, and small market towns. However, countries define minimum size of population required to enable a settlement to be termed a town differently. In USA, it is 2,500, Denmark is 250. However, in China, there is not a clear definition of how big a town or village should be. One defintion of China's is an area with less than 100,000 of foreign population can be defined as a town or village. Normally, LEDCs like China have much more rural population than MEDCs such as Britain and USA.One reason for this phenomenon is that LEDCs tend to have large amount of primary industries such as farming and forestry, more population might be needed to work on the land. These people, however, are relatively poor than those in urban. Although China has implemented the One child policy in 1979. Yet, many rural areas would not obey this law which lead to a higher birth rate in the rural area than in urban. To alleviate this problem, China allows people in countryside to have a second child if the first one is a girl (sex discrimination is a serious problem in rural). Normaly familise would still have more than 2 kids. In MEDCs, where tertiary industries are more concentrated, there would be more people in urban areas. Industrilization and urbanization happened in the early 20th century which attracted most people. Now the cities are in a very mature stage. As urban areas grow, rural areas tend to decrease, so as rural population. Britain has a huge popuilation decline in Agriculture. This is contributed not only by the more service sector, but also the higher technology and skills in mechanization which restult in larger yields with less people. Applying the green revolution which include hybrid seed selection, fertilizers and pesticides used (biochemical); irrigation by diesel and electric pumps, tractors and fam machanization and transport roads and vehicles (mechanical); and land reforms such as terrace and varied crops farming would all increase the yields to support the country and, in the same time, with efficiencies in the use of land and labours. However, China can not afford these changes to all the villages. There might be some innovation and high technologies applied to small portion of the rural area, yet, mannual work are the primary way to work on the farm land.The family size of Chinese rural areas is shrinking, where in 2003, it is 3.69. (it used to be more than 6). However, the population size of Britain is increasing as a result of counter-urbanization and the pursuit to leisure activities.Elders and children are the three main types of people in rural areas in China. It is true that working on farmland might require stronger young men. Yet, 90 million in 2003, 118 million in 2004 left for pull factors such as better paid and higher living standard in rural areas. Younger women also tend to leave the families tend to find 'decent' jobs in the cities to feed the whole...
