The stories widely circulated on the Chinese Internet during the Spring Festival this year not only include the typical holiday topics but also a tragic love story of a young woman from the nation's commercial center Shanghai who decided to dump her boyfriend at once after the man brought her to his hometown, a village in East China's Jiangxi Province, during the Chinese lunar New Year holidays.

The story has deep resonance among the public because, to some extent, it highlights the Chinese society's pain points amid a widening urban-rural gap seen in some regions of China.

A picture shared by the woman herself showing simple dishes and an old dining table in the village, sharply contrasted a wasteful family reunion dinner in one of China's top-tier cities on the Chinese lunar New Year 's Eve.

Despite some people questioning the authenticity of the photo and the story, it has triggered heated discussions online over the country's urban-rural gap and the fact that some villages are still quite underdeveloped despite the country's efforts to boost urbanization and encourage integration of rural migrant workers into the city life.

In the past few years, China has made progress in integrating rural migrant workers into cities by improving the urban residence permit system and safeguarding the interests of migrant workers in cities.

These efforts serve as a major engine for China's urbanization but have to some extent plundered the resources for development in the rural areas. It is perhaps now the right time for China to develop a new area of growth for the rural economy.

According to the annual "No.1 document" released by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council, China's cabinet, implementing reforms to modernize the agricultural sector and improving farmers' well-being will be the government's top priority.

China's economic development has been uneven. While the GDP per capita in some top-tier cities have reached the level of an upper middle income country, there were still 70.17 million people in the countryside living below the country's poverty line at the end of 2014.

China's future efforts to strengthen the infrastructure of agriculture could offer great potential for the country's economic growth.

The process of urbanization in developed countries went through several stages including urbanization, sub-urbanization and counter-urbanization, which refers to a movement of population from major cities to less urbanized and rural areas.

In this regard, China has only reached the first half of the urbanization process by encouraging rural migrant workers to be absorbed into cities, but still has a long way to go in narrowing urban-rural gap and boosting counter-urbanization, which has been considered by some analysts as the second phase of the country's urbanization process.

The tragic love story circulating on the Chinese Internet during this Spring Festival is regrettable, but it doesn't mean we need to be hesitant about encouraging urbanization.

On the contrary, speeding up the process of urbanization may be the only solution of current problems like the left-behind children and the difficulties of some rural migrant workers in finding girlfriends in cities.

China may need to improve the quality of its urbanization process in the future and make bigger efforts in narrowing urban-rural gap. Boosting counter-urbanization will also help stimulate China's economy.

The author is a reporter with the Global Times. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn