It is of great significance to consolidate the achievements of poverty alleviation and enhance development capacity and the ability to resist shocks in contiguous poverty-stricken areas. Economic resilience, as an indicator of the resistance, recovery, adjustment, and transformation ability of regional economic systems in response to shocks, can effectively reflect the ability to resist shocks and the risk of returning to poverty in contiguous poverty-stricken areas. Based on the data of 12 contiguous poverty-stricken areas in China, economic resilience was measured and compared by constructing a comprehensive index system and core evaluation variables, and a variety of regression models were used to identify the main influencing factors. The results show that: 1) The economic resilience of contiguous poverty-stricken areas is lower than non-contiguous poverty-stricken areas. In both types of areas economic resilience has been increasing year by year, but the growth rate of non-contiguous poverty-stricken areas is slightly faster. After decomposing the index, it was found that the difference in economic resilience between contiguous poverty-stricken areas and non-contiguous poverty-stricken areas is primarily due to the ability to adapt and adjust. 2) Luoxiao Mountains, Yanshan-Taihang Mountains, and Dabie Mountains have the highest mean values of economic resilience, while the border mountainous areas in western Yunnan Province, Liupan Mountains, and the Tibetan area of four provinces have the lowest mean values of economic resilience. 3) The economic resilience of most areas was increasing. The areas with higher economic resilience tend to grow faster, but the economic resilience of the Tibetan area of four provinces, Liupan Mountains, and Lvliang Mountains showed a downward trend. Among them, the decline in Lvliang Mountains is the most obvious. After decomposing the economic resilience of different regions, it was found that the differences in adaptation and adjustment capabilities were the largest in different regions, and the differences in innovation and transformation capabilities were the smallest. 4) Variables such as geographical location, assets investment per capita, dependence on international trade, the level of self-sufficiency in finance, expenditure on education, and the number of patents have significant effects on the economic resilience and its growth in poverty-stricken areas. 5) Poverty alleviation policy is conducive to enhancing economic resilience. Areas with low economic resilience are highly dependent on poverty alleviation policies, among which the Tibetan areas in four provinces, Liupan Mountains, and the border mountainous areas of western Yunnan are most heavily dependent on poverty alleviation policies.

Addressing regional poverty is the prerequisite for completing the process of building a moderately well-off society in all aspects. As a concentrated area of China's impoverished rural population, the study on the spatial and temporal patterns of poverty in hilly and mountainous areas and its driving mechanism is of great theoretical significance for the transformation and development of poor areas and rural revitalization. Based on the perspective of regional poverty, this study, taking Yudu County of Jiangxi Province as an example, used the standard deviational ellipse, spatial autocorrelation, kernel density estimation, and geographical detector model to describe the geographical pattern of rural poverty and its differentiation characteristics in the county, identify the leading factors of rural poverty, and reveal the driving mechanism of poverty in hilly and mountainous areas. The results demonstrated that the phenomenon of spatial agglomeration exists in the occurrence of rural poverty in hilly and mountainous areas, and the aggregation effect decreases with the proper implementation of poverty alleviation policies. The dominant influencing factors responsible for the spatial differentiation of rural poverty in Yudu County include slope of the terrain, traffic accessibility to town centers from administrative villages, road network density, and the number of public service agencies. As time goes, the influence of natural resource endowment conditions on the spatial differentiation of rural poverty has been weakened while geographic conditions gradually plays a leading role. The leading factors influencing the spatial differentiation of poverty in hilly and mountainous areas varied at different stages. Rural poverty in hilly and mountainous areas has its natural and cultural roots. The formulation and implementation of scientific poverty reduction policies should be based on deepening the theoretical understanding of poverty occurrence mechanism, and promoting the alleviation of regional and individual poverty in a coordinated way, so as to realize the transformation, development, and rural revitalization of poor areas.

Under the influence of rapid urbanization and industrialization, the problems of "rural diseases" faced by rural areas, especially the deep poverty areas are prominent, affecting rural sustainable development. There is an urgent need to better understand the process and characteristics of rural regional system change, identify restricting factors of rural development, and propose the suitable paths of rural revitalization for promoting rural sustainable development. This study took Yangyuan County as an example, investigated rural central agglomeration and growth from the perspective of land-use change, and revealed the evolution characteristics of rural human-land relationship in deep poverty areas. The results show that: 1) With the continuous reduction of arable land, the expansion intensity of villages is higher than that of township government seats and the county seat. 2) The agglomeration degree of production factors in the county seat, towns, and villages is imbalanced, resulting in a declining central agglomeration from the areas near the county seat to township government seats, and to remote rural villages. 3) Affected by the factors of traffic, location, and natural environment, areas near the county seat, better-located townships, and areas near transportation arteries are more likely to gather production factors and become high-value areas for rural growth. 4) The problem of rural resident population outflow is serious in deep poverty areas, causing rural hollowing with a phenomenon of declining population- increasing land. The article emphasized that the economic development level and urban-rural connection should be improved to enhance the county seat's ability to facilitate development in the countryside, and ruralization should be promoted alongside urbanization. Besides, it is necessary to implement comprehensive land consolidation in hollowed villages and cultivate rural social capital to promote endogenous rural development.

Absolute poverty will be completely eliminated in China in 2020. However, due to the imbalance between urban and rural development, the differentiation of basic public services between urban and rural areas, and the lack of robust internal motivations in some special groups of people, relative poverty will become a long-lasting problem and a key factor hindering social and economic progress and social stability. Therefore, the study of China's relative poverty will provide a theoretical reference for the establishment of a long-term mechanism to solve the problem of relative poverty in rural China in the post-2020 period. Taking farming households as the research object and 2018 as the time frame of the research, this study systematically analyzed the connotation and characteristics of relative poverty in the post-2020 period and built a measurement and evaluation index system for relative poverty. It also defined the relative poverty line based on a multidimensional perspective and conducted an empirical analysis with Changshou District of Chongqing Municipality as an example. The research generated the following results: 1) The relative poverty index is a useful measure that defines the relative poverty line from a multidimensional perspective of materials, development, ability, and social security. The empirical analysis demonstrates that the relative poverty index is more in line with the actual situation than the single income method in defining the relative poverty line and it can fully meet the needs of reflecting or quantifying actual living conditions of people. 2) Because of the weak support from industry, less opportunities to participate in the cooperative development and skill training of labors, lower level of education, and the fact that more than a third of the relatively poor households are elderly, disabled and seriously ill persons, the relative poverty population are less likely to improve their quality of life, strengthen their capacities, and have access to development. 3) Poverty alleviation policies, economic foundations, social security, and personal conditions are important factors affecting relative poverty. Among them, regional policies are the external causes of relative poverty, economic factors are the key to stimulate the formation of relative poverty, social factors are the basic impetus to prevent the formation of relative poverty, and personal factors are the internal cause of relative poverty.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of poverty reduction is a hot topic in international poverty reduction strategy research in recent years, and it is also a key issue for China to deepen and improve the quality of poverty reduction in the future. Based on the criteria of "rural poor people have no worry about food and clothing and have access to compulsory education, basic medical services, and safe housing", this study constructed an index system for evaluating the effectiveness of poverty reduction, which covers economic, demographic, social, and green development dimensions that include 12 indexes. Entropy weight and fuzzy set methods were used to reveal the effectiveness of poverty reduction in 126 cities of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and the spatial autocorrelation theory was introduced to analyze the spatial differentiation and evolution characteristics of poverty reduction effectiveness in the region. The results show that: 1) During 2011 and 2017, the Yangtze River Economic Belt as a whole achieved remarkable results in poverty reduction, but there were obvious spatial differences among different areas, and there was great potential for poverty reduction and improvement in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. 2) During the study period, the Moran's I of the cities was greater than 0 and increased year by year, the effectiveness of poverty reduction in the cities showed a positive spatial correlation and the agglomeration characteristics steadily enhanced. 3) There were regional differences in the local indicators of spatial association (LISA) value of the poverty reduction effectiveness index during the study period, and the local spatial autocorrelation between the upper and the middle reaches was more significant. Especially in the concentrated contiguous severe poverty areas, it showed the correlation characteristic of continuous agglomeration. The research results can provide a reference for promoting sustainable poverty reduction and coordinating regional economic, social, and ecological developments in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.