Abstract: The 15th Five-Year Plan period marks a critical stage in China’s march toward the goal of basically realizing socialist modernization by 2035. Proactively assessing rural development trends and systematically planning rural construction strategies are of great significance for advancing agricultural and rural modernization. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, a series of measures have been taken to promote rural construction, leading to comprehensive economic and social development in rural areas and continuous improvement in the level of agricultural and rural modernization. The evolutionary trajectory of rural construction reflects a logic of expanding driving forces from a "material-oriented" to a "people-oriented" approach, a shift in driving modes from "exogenous-led" to "endogenous development", and a deepening focus of the driving field from "urban-rural gap" to "rural differentiation", all of which indicate profound changes in the driving mechanisms of rural construction in the new era. Nevertheless, rural construction still faces multiple challenges, including insufficient consideration of heterogeneity in rural planning, tensions between rural infrastructure and modernization goals, mismatches between public service provision and demographic trends, inadequate alignment between the living environment and the requirements of ecological livability, and difficulties in ensuring that factor endowments meet the demands for sustainable rural construction and operation. To address these challenges, efforts should be made to follow the shifting logic of driving forces, with a focus on promoting the clustered spatial layout of rural construction, modernizing and intelligently upgrading production and living facilities, advancing the fine-grained provision of rural public services, facilitating the green transition of development models, and strengthening the resource-based operationalization of rural factors, so as to synergistically advance rural construction.

Key words: the 15th Five-Year Plan period, rural construction, comprehensive rural revitalization, agricultural powerhouse