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Village-level archives are the most basic construction unit of rural archives in China, yet the village-level archival work is the most poorly delivered. However, the evolution of the laws and rules on village-level archival work in recent years signal that Chinese village-level archival work has stepped into a new era. In this context, this article aims to review the detailed history of village-level archival legislation, examine the legislation’ implementation effect and discuss the existing problems with a view to providing improvement measures.

A historical research method is used to review the legislation’ history, and the analysis involving the implementation effect is mainly based on literature of two kinds, which are investigation reports on sample villages’ archival work carried out by scholars, and summary reports and work schemes on national or local village-level archival work given by the archival management or administrative management departments at various level.

At first, China only issued non-legal administrative orders toward village-level archival work. Later, some regions issued local rules, and finally the national rules and even Archives Law with relevant provisions were promulgated. However, their implementation faced two fundamental problems; firstly the insufficient endogenous demand for archival work in some villages, and secondly the mechanism problem involving village level archives management. The countermeasures are also discussed building on these two points.

This is the first article to systematically combine a review of the history of Chinese village-level archival legislation and in addition to examine their implementation effect including analyzing the existing problems from the macro level.