Abstract: To improve farmers living quality and decrease the production cost， effective supply of public goods is important in rural areas. The true expression of farmers demand for rural public goods is the premise of effective supply. In this paper， the studies about public good and its demand in rural areas were reviewed. It has gone through two stages in the foreign academic circles， namely， indirect expression traditional theories stage， including preference revealing and tax system designing， residents liquidity and local public goods supplying， and personal preference revealing and public choice mechanism， and direct expression modern empirical researches stage which included contingent valuation method and the demand expression of public goods in rural areas. Besides， the application of demand expression theory in Chinese rural public goods supply was summarized from 3 aspects， i.e. the status and problems of demand expression， the reason of blocked expression and according countermeasure on improving presentation mechanism．

Key words: rural areas, public goods, demand expression, review