Abstract:

The establishment and development of villager autonomy system is a milestone in China’s political life and the progress of social development. Thus，it is incumbent to carry out an indepth research on villager autonomy system and draw lessons from the previous experiences. From the few thousand years of history of Chinese village governance，we can conclude that villager autonomy system is the result of the influence of western democratic ideology on China’s modernization and a fruit of China’s development into a powerful and an abundant nation. However，as China’s democratization road isn’t a smooth one，the final establishment of villager autonomy system is not only the choice of the state power in the face of legitimacy crisis，but also the choice of both the government based on cost and benefit analysis and the villagers based on political economy rationality.

Key words: village governance system, villager autonomy system, democracy, legitimacy, economic rationality