China’s ongoing rural to urban transformation benefits the population but is not evenly spread

Abstract China prioritizes a coordinated and sustainable shift from rural to urban areas, termed rural-urban transformation. This involves land, population, and industry urbanization. Here we explore the spatiotemporal dynamics of rural-urban transformation patterns in China, focusing on the degree of integrated transformation and the coupling between the three tracks. To conduct our investigation, we utilized the urbanization cube theory, satellite-derived gridded datasets, and the self-organizing map. Our findings show that eastern China has higher levels of integrated transformation and coupling compared to western China. There has been an overall increase in the coupling of China’s three rural-urban transformation tracks. We identified six typical rural-urban transformation patterns across China. Over time, 53.58% of prefectures improved in rural-urban transformation patterns, 3.44% degraded, and 42.98% (mainly in western China) remained unchanged. More importantly, we highlight that the increasing and coupling rural-urban transformation in China has reduced inequities in urban and rural well-being.