At present, the participation of New Rural Gentry in rural governance is not a simple return to the traditional, but it also contains a lot of historical and cultural genes. However, the theoretical research on “Who is governing?” and “How to govern?” In rural society shows the characteristic of  “Time division”. In this paper, the elite theory is used as an analytical tool, focusing on the inheritance and evolution of rural elite governance, based on the basis of rural elite's acquisition of dominant ability, mode, role and function, main characteristics and other factors, at the same time, two key variables, “Folk identity” and“Time dimension”, are selected to construct four kinds of rural elites: “Confucian type”, “Resource type”, “Integrative type” and“Fusion Type”, a historical study of rural social governance in China from the late Qing dynasty to the late Qing dynasty is made by means of the combination of grand narration and case analysis, “Subject analysis” and “Rule analysis”, it provides a unified concept and a complete logical chain for investigating the changes of rural social governance in China over the past hundred years.