Abstract: China's agriculture and rural development have made great achievements since the reform and open-door policy was initiated. However, it can be seen clearly that agricultural foundation of China is still weak, rural development is still lagging behind, and the increase of farmers' incomes is still unstable. Village is definitely the main battlefield of solving problems related to farmers, agriculture and rural areas (so called "San Nong Wen Ti" in Chinese) and building new countryside, so it is of great theoretical and practical value to carry out studies on the evolutionary process and dynamic mechanism of village development. This study aims to explore the evolutionary processes, common features and general mechanism of village development in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain, a representative of China's traditional agricultural regions, based on systematic analysis of development history and mechanism of five villages in three counties with different types of rural development. The main contents and results were summed up as follows: (1) Factors that influence village development. Geographical location, economic basis, resource and environment endowments, social capital and human capital are internal influencing factors; macroeconomic environment, institutional arrangement, market demand, professional techniques and government support are external ones; accidental factors from interior or exterior village may catalyze, lubricate or block village development. (2) Common features of village development. Grassroots participation is the core concept and basic principles that should be adhered to during the course of village development; the integration of internal and external motivation is the objective needs of village development and rural elites play an important role during the process, in particular, they are usually the key actors of motivating and integrating the desire of internal and external participants; to seize high value-added part of value chain is the strategic orientation of village industrial development; innovation is one of the most important engines driving village development; strategy, planning and executive force are also vital supports for village development; and overall, village development is a dynamic process of self-organizing and network forming. (3) General mechanism of village development. Local villagers are the main body of village development, and rural elites are the core element. Based on a systematic insight into the local resources endowment, development willingness, market demand, government's policy orientation, external experiences and so on, the rural elites exert themselves to stimulate the internal motivation and integrate the external motivation, and then these actors jointly build the collaborative organization, learn for innovation, formulate development strategy, carry out division of labor and participate in market competition, so as to accelerate the optimization of local village's bio-physical structure, techno-economic structure and institutional-social structure, and as such the village may realize a transitional development. These findings may contribute to the theorizing of village transformation development in contemporary China and benefit local democratic decision-making, land consolidation and the development of high-benefit industrial agriculture in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain.

Key words: village transformation development, evolutionary process, influencing factor, common feature, general mechanism, the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain, typical regions with different types of rural development