中文摘要：

中国农村村民自治源起于20世纪80年代初，是在人民公社体制废除后，国家为了实现乡村地区的有效治理而推进的一项制度。村民自治作为中国特色社会主义的自治制度，是对传统乡村治理方式的突破，是中国民主化实践的创新之处。国内学术界对村民自治的热切关注始于上世纪90年代，针对村民自治实践中的成效与困境、性质与定位、未来发展与走向等问题也形成了诸多学术思考和学术作品。通过梳理既有文献特别是近年来的学术讨论，可以全面回顾村民自治三十余年的发展轨迹，深入剖析村民自治的实质，合理界定村民自治的民主属性，进而总结在扩展中国式民主的进程中，村民自治所能发挥的作用及其变革空间。

英文摘要：

Chinese villagers' autonomy originated during the early 80s of the 20th century, Chinese govern-ment established this system in order to realize the effective governance of rural areas after the abolition of the peo-ple's commune system . The villager autonomy is a socialist system with Chinese characteristics, it is a breakthrough of the traditional rural governance and the innovation of the practice of democracy in China. Chinese academia has paid close attention to villager autonomy since the 1990s. Many academic thinking and works on the future develop-ment and direction of villagers' self governance practice have been formed. By combing the existing literatures, this paper comprehensively reviews the development of the Chinese villagers' self governance and in-depth analyses the nature of the villagers' autonomy. This paper reasonably defines the democratic nature of the villagers' autonomy, and then summes up the role of the villagers' autonomy in the process of expanding the democratic process and its change space.