With the development of rural urbanization, rural social structure has undergone enormous changes. To understand the research status of China's rural public space, this paper uses the systematic literature review approach, takes 12 journals in the subject area of ＂Human Economic Geography＂ included in the ＂Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index＂ database as the carriers to search the literature with rural as the theme for analysis, and further selects rural public space as the core content for in-depth interpretation. It found that ＂rural tourism＂, ＂urban and rural co-ordination＂, ＂peasant household's behavior＂ and ＂rural governance＂ and other topics have become research hotspots in rural geography. Research contents are diversified and obviously guided by national policies. Rural transformation, reconstruction and governance are becoming the research cores. Along with the rural planning construction, rural public space has caused widespread attention, but it has been mostly mentioned as an aspect in the text, rarely as a subject. The research perspective is relatively macroscopic, with little exploration on rural residents, families, organizations and their relationships. Even the research on their behaviors is mostly focused on the explicit level, often staying in the spatial context to classify and describe behavioral activities, but ignore or simplify the complex decision-making process behind these explicit activities. The development of rural areas in the future should start from the meaning of ＂publicity＂ in public space, and carry out in-depth research on behavior subjects, decision-making process and governance of rural construction from multiple disciplines, perspectives and directions.