The rural revitalization strategy, which was announced during the 19th CPC National Congress, tasked scholars in urban and rural studies to increase their focus on the development of rural regions. This paper identifies gaps in existing research on China’s rural planning in three areas, namely the relevant legislation, governance mechanisms, and technological means. It argues from three aspects. First, planning field failed to clarify how different levels of legislation impact development in rural areas, resulting in a lack of clarity concerning the legal foundations of rural planning. Based on different ideas, scholars have adopted two approaches to the position of rural planning. One approach follows the path of entrusted agency relationships, which starts by describing the social and historical causes of rural social autonomy and the rule of law. This approach gives full respect to the autonomy of village-level self-governance organizations with villagers’ interests in mind, emphasizing the sense of service and responsibility to villagers, and reconstructs planning power in rural areas through two-way interactions so that it can become an important mechanism of rural community governance. The other approach follows the logic of the urban-rural planning system by treating rural planning as a technical and governing tool adopted by local governments that allows them to consider the overall considerations of jurisdictions. And this approach aims to improve planning methods, and to look deeper into village-township system planning and village master planning. Second, planning field fails to highlight the self-governing characteristics of rural communities. Consequently, conf licts and contradictions between local autonomy and administrative interventions are neglected. As a result, rural planning from the perspective of urban-rural planning serves as an “assistant” to basic-level governments in promoting rural construction, often led by the requirements of external agents, and it usually overlooks the spatial, social, and cultural needs of the villagers. Practitioners simply extend the spatial construction methods adopted in urban areas to rural planning. Furthermore, and due to a lack of familiarity with rural issues, planning fails to take the following into full consideration: the rural social order, spatial relationships in the neighborhood, and rural socio-economic development paths. This produces various contradictions in the implementation process. Relevant research studies, however, tend to remain confined to a discussion of rural planning systems, formulation methods and planning modes, and often neglect the fundamental problems related to rural practices, such as the unique political context of rural life, the incompatibility between urban planning methods and rural areas, and the short-term and long-term visions of different stakeholders in rural areas. This neglect may lead to difficulties in implementing most rural planning projects. Third, current rural planning generally adopts the urban planning methods of investigation, study design and formulation; however, it disregards the attributes specific to rural planning, especially where the two factors mentioned above are concerned. With the professional knowledge and the technical means at their disposal, planners should have been able to grasp local realities and folk characteristics and generate rural plans that meet local needs; however, the current situation is very different. Current rural planning methods make it difficult to avoid the mispositioning of thinking modes, concept guidance, and value judgments, which generally results in impoverished local intellectual energies. Planners are not ready to communicate effectively with the villagers; the proposed plans are either not recognized and understood by the villagers, are not intended to be discussed by the villagers at all, or, are just for the praise of experts and local government officials. If the goal of rural revitalization is really established through the implementation of rural planning, then the theoretical method of modern urban planning based on the western cultural system should be creatively redirected and the method should be tailored to eastern systems. This paper identifies that coherent and reasonable rural planning methodologies can only be developed through a joint consideration of the legislation, governance mechanisms and planning technologies. Therefore, the following issues are needed to be answered by scholars: Should rural planning be completely dependent on the self-development vision of rural self-government communities? How can the coordination and interaction mechanisms between rural self-government and urban governance be effectively translated to rural planning and urban planning? What is the significance of rural revitalization for cities and villages? How are they achieved? How are they discussed, planned, and formed in order to be realized in shared programs of action through urban planning and rural planning? This type of approach can accommodate the current condition of urban-rural relations in China and lay a foundation for rural development through the integration of planning research and practice.