The county territory is a basic territorial unit for planning the distribution of villages and townlets.The sociaI and economic connections between rural settlemets are kept mainly in accordance with local administrative relations There ar ecounty centres,district centres,township centres,large villages and hamlets.There are 18% of total county centres in China without founding town administrative organization,but treated as urban settlements in town planning and construction.Only a very few of district centres and township centres have administrative town organization.This article expound the characters,functions,structures,sizes,sphere of influence or linkages,their perspectives,main points for distribution planning and construction of settlements of different administrative grades in county. The changes in distribution,characters,functions and other aspects of villages and townlets are caused by bothrural social-economic development and urban-industrial development,such as specialized farm households and main producer farm households,the prosperity of rural marketing,the development of service trades in countryside;the construction of new satellite towns and manufacturing or mining areas,the reformation in the administrative system, for example,central cities on the prefecture-level with developed industry and commerce can exercise direct leadership over surrounding counties.Briefly,the two urbanization processes from bottom up to top and from top down to bottom bring great impact on rural construction.