Over 70% of the township villages in the high income group are concentrated in the central region of Henan province, where the nine major cities of the province are located. In terms of geographic location, however, the impact is significant in the high income villages. For the villages with less than 20% of non-agricultural industries in its total economies, an increase in one hectare of arable land per capita will add 97 yuan to per capita income. Arable land per capita contributes significantly to the income in the villages with weak non-agricultural industries. Quantitative analysis further reveals that the landform of a township village affects its income at a high significance level the significance will reduce as the income in the village increases.

Landform and other agricultural resources significantly affect economic development in the areas at the lower stage of growth, while the geographical location shows more significant impact in the areas with the relatively high income level. The result indicates that geography still plays a significant role in rural development. This study uses the data on 1736 township level administrative areas from an interior province of Henan, the largest and less developed agricultural province in China, to examine how geography plays the role in determining economic development in rural areas. Existing literature on rural regional development in China has paid little attention to the studies in small geographical scales.

Township definition human geography