Review Reports - The Transformation of Rural Areas Located in China’s Agricultural Heritage Systems under the Evolution of Urban–Rural Relationships

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I am glad to be able to assess this scientific study, which is very interesting in its content and relevant not only for the area of China, but for the entire transforming world as a result of climate change on our planet. The soil, which represents one of the basic attributes of human survival, plays a key role in the construction of cities as well as in the countryside.

The authors really devoted a lot of time to the study, I appreciate its extensiveness. I am surprised, however, why the "discussion" part starts at the very end, I would have assumed the opposite. Which would be logical.

In terms of content, the study is extensive, however, I lack a clear determination of research questions or hypotheses and, consequently, a clear answer to them in the conclusion.

I would also appreciate that the authors focus in this context on the very important issue of protection or valuing agricultural land as they do, e.g.

Peráček T, Srebalová M. & Srebala A. (2022). The Valuation of Land in Land Consolidation and Relevant Administrative Procedures in the Conditions of the Slovak Republic. Administrative Sciences. 12 (4):174. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci12040174

TEODORU, G. (2022). Legal Restrictions on the Sale of Forest Land in Romania. Comparative Analysis with French Law. Perspectives of Law and Public Administration, 11 (4) pp. 572-585, https://adjuris.ro/revista/articole/An11nr4/9.%20Gabriela%20Teodoru%20EN.pdf

Also, the number of sources (34) is, in my opinion, low for this type of scientific journal, I recommend adding relevant scientific sources.

Author Response

Thank you so much! Please see the attachment. Best regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thanks for inviting me to review this manuscript. This topic is interesting and the paper is well-structured in general. A few comments that will help you to improve the quality of the paper. Please revise it point by point.

1. Line 49-54, “The rural elements of agricultural cultural heritage can be manifested as follows”. You will need references for these.

2. I think it is still not very well explained how AHS is distinct from normal rural areas and therefore the contribution of this paper cannot be clearly stated in the intro section. You need to make yourself very clear why you need to do this research and how it can contribute to the literature.

3. Since I am not sure what is the aim of this paper (from the intro section) I cannot know whether the methodology is suitable. But according to the title, the paper should be about the changes in the five AHS rural areas. That will include changes in land, population, social structure, culture, and governance in those rural areas. Of course you are not expected to study each one of them in one single paper but merely talking about features such as the population urbanisation rate and land use seems to me, a goof-off. I will take a further look at it after the intro is revised.

4. Also, for methodology. The current statistical analyses (here I mean sections 5.1 and 5.2; section 5.3 is OK) are of high school level. This kind of statistical analysis is definitely not publishable. You have two waves of data, and I believe you are able to find more between 2000 and 2020. Then it is practical to do some causal inference instead of “correlations”. Correlations mean nothing. Knowing that two things are significantly correlated does NOT tell you for example population urbanisation leads to GDP increase. You could try IV (see Arellano & Bover, 1995), matching (Caliendo & Kopeinig, 2008), or did (Wing et al., 2018). I am sure your data will allow you to do this.

5. I think one of the most significant limitations of this paper is, as I mentioned before, the authors merely considered objectively measured changes, such as land use, population (it is not really the population, it is the hukou status), gdp, such and such. I think this is especially problematic for a study that focuses on AHS because those places are special not because of those objective things, it is the cultural roots, the community and society that makes those rural areas important and different (see also Su et al., 2018). For example, Liu et al. (2023) stated that ancestral halls and gemeinschaft-owned spaces shaped rural settlements. Rural residents’ living environments are combined with cultivated land, built environment, and the natural environment. In AHS, this feature should be even more notable. How has this changed? Please discuss this in the discussion section.

Reference

Arellano, M., & Bover, O. (1995). Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models. Journal of econometrics, 68(1), 29-51.

Caliendo, M., & Kopeinig, S. (2008). Some practical guidance for the implementation of propensity score matching. Journal of economic surveys, 22(1), 31-72.

Liu, Q., Liu, Z., Yu, Z., & Zhao, P. (2023). The living environment and intravillage activity-travel: A conceptual framework based on participant observation in Guangdong, China. Journal of Rural Studies, 99, 121-133.

Su, M., Sun, Y., Min, Q., & Jiao, W. (2018). A community livelihood approach to agricultural heritage system conservation and tourism development: Xuanhua Grape Garden urban agricultural heritage site, Hebei Province of China. Sustainability, 10(2), 361.

Wing, C., Simon, K., & Bello-Gomez, R. A. (2018). Designing difference in difference studies: best practices for public health policy research. Annual review of public health, 39.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

it can be benefit from proofreading

Author Response

Thank you so much! Please see the attachment. Best regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Since you were trying to include multiple characteristics (land, labor, etc.), it was a bit challenging at times to follow the information, especially in the conclusion starting with line 500.

Otherwise, this is a very well written manuscript with a lot information provided.

The charts were helpful and accurate from all indications.

Further discussions could be reworded a bit to make it easier to read. Possibly have an editor that has not read manuscript to provide recommendations?

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Well written. Just needs some additional editing to provide for clarity in the later sections and for flow.

Author Response

Thank you so much! Please see the attachment. Best regards!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

the manuscript "The Transformation of Rural Areas Located in China’s Agricultural Heritage Systems under the Evolution of Urban-Rural Relationships" submitted to Sustainability Journal is interesing and well structured. Hovewer, I recomend some improvments.

Please, insert a novelty section at the end of the Introductory Parts, after line 111.

Please, insert a section of Literature Review after Introduction.

Please, reduce Results section.

Please, insert the limitation of the manuscript and the limitation abiut the issue analyzed.

Author Response

Thank you so much! Please see the attachment. Best regards!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have carefully read the authors' really extensively elaborated scientific study.

However, I was surprised by the relatively brief response to my comments, but especially the ignoring of one of my recommendations, that the authors also deal with the issue of land protection, its ownership, valuation, as the proposed authors do in the first assessment, namely:

Suggested scientific sources where I forgot to mention as the work of the authors:

Fedchyshyn, D and Ignatenko, I. 2018 Protection of land ownership of foreigners in Ukraine. Juridical Tribune - Tribuna Juridica, 8 (SI), pp. 27-38.

The mentioned suggestions for supplementing the literature also stem from my concern about the authors' too one-sided focus only on Chinese sources. They objectively do not provide a different perspective on the investigated issue, which must also be grasped from a legislative point of view, which determines the parameters of soil management.

However, in the first review, I neglected to remind authors that the guidelines for authors published on the journal's website must be followed. In the introduction, research questions and/or hypotheses must be established and answered clearly in the discussion or in the conclusion.

I believe that my comments will be incorporated by the authors and thereby increase the scientific value of the re-assessed work.

Author Response

Thank you for your professional review work on our article

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

the revised manuscript looks ok.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

it really needs some extensive editing.

Author Response

Point1:

The revised manuscript looks ok. It really needs some extensive editing.

Response 1:

Thank you for your kind and useful suggestion. In the second round of revision, we asked a professional institution to help us with a second English polish to our manuscript and did extensive editing. After proofreading, the grammar and words of the article are accurate, and the language is fluent.

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I agree with the publication this article.