Abstract—Rural design guidelines is one of the statutory instruments identifying and interpreting directions for rural development on the basis of the actual needs of rural development, securing and normalizing procedures of rural design, construction, and management, guiding and controlling environment and landscape features of the rural space. Guidance and control mechanisms have been respectively established in China and the U.S for rural development, for which rural design guidelines are critical evaluation references, guidance standards, and instruction documentations. This paper outputs a definition for rural design guidelines, and thoroughly analyzes 37 pieces of rural design guidelines from 15 states of the U.S and 44 pieces of guidelines from 15 Chinese provinces collected and sorted out by the authors. It intends to disclose the features and differences of Chinese and American rural design guidelines via the induction of guidance and control factors and the classified comparison of the guidelines, and to compare the guideline-making procedures and application mechanisms between the Chinese and American rural design guidelines under the different circumstances of rural development, in order to offer effective references for rural development practices and studies in different countries.