Abstract: The energy consumption in rural area of China is related to the activities of production, living standard and environmental quality. The paper mainly analyses the energy consumption conditions in the rural area. The total energy consumption in rural area reached to 690 Mtce in 1995. But the annual per capita commodity energy consumpsion was only 0.56 tce, far below the national average. The energy consumption in village and town industries increases rapidly in the past 17 years. The energy consumption in village and town industries reaches 325 Mtce in 1995, which is 65 % of the total commodity energy in rural area. By the efforts of rural energy development, about 30 Mtce is obtained from renewable energy utilization of biomass, solar, wind energy and small scale hydropower, etc. The rural energy development increased effectively the energy supply to rural area, improved the structure of rural energy consumption, and promoted the rural social economy development. The population of lack firewood is reduced from 420 millions in 1979 to 70 millions in 1995. Along with raising of living level in rural area, the demand of high quality fuel increases year by year. There are 48 million of households used different high quality energy such as gases and LPG etc in 1995. This paper objectively analyses the existing proplems in relation to energy, society and environment,etc. It is to establish the foundation to further discussion on the stratagem of rural energy development.