Recently, the results of the 10th Outstanding Achievement Award for Scientific Research in Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education were announced. Professor Liu Jinghua from IEC at TJNU won the Second Prize for his article entitled "Rural Urbanization in Western Europe since Industrialization," which was originally published in Social Sciences in China, Issue 11, 2023.

Grounded in the perspective of modern and contemporary world history, the paper constructs a three‑dimensional analytical framework to interpret the development of rural urbanization during Western Europe's industrialization. The framework addresses three key aspects: first, the dominance and control of cities over rural areas in the course of industrialization; second, the evolving features of urbanization in rural territories and the citizenization of the rural population; and third, the progressive trend toward equal integration and integrated urban‑rural development. The study offers a dialectical summary of the experiences and lessons drawn from Western Europe's urban‑rural transformation, thereby providing historical insights and theoretical references for China's rural revitalization and high‑quality integrated urban‑rural development in the new era.