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.

当前新乡贤参与乡村治理虽不是传统乡绅之治的简单复归,但也蕴含着厚重的历史文化基因。然而,当前学术界对乡村社会中 “谁在治理?” “如何治理?”问题的理论研究,却表现出“时间分割”的特点。本文采用精英理论作为分析工具,聚焦乡村精英治理的传承与流变,以乡村精英获取支配能力的依据和方式、角色和功能、主要特征等因素为依据,同时选取 “民间认同”和“时间维度”两个关键变量,构建出 “儒教型”“资源型”“统合型”“融合型”四类乡村精英治理模式作为分析框架,采用宏大叙事和个案分析相结合、 “主体分析”和 “规则分析”相结合的方式对晚清以降中国乡村社会治理进行历史考察,以此完整考察晚清以降乡村精英支配或影响中国乡村社会的变迁特征,并阐释其背后蕴含的逻辑链条。