Abstract: During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council made strategic decisions to promote the construction of livable, productive, and harmonious rural areas, strengthen the governance of agricultural non-point source pollution, advance carbon emission reduction and carbon sequestration in agriculture and rural areas, and improve the rural ecological environment, to ensure that a healthy ecosystem underpins rural revitalization. Rural domestic waste management constitutes an integral part of these efforts. Drawing on policy implementation and practical progress in rural domestic waste management during this period, this paper systematically analyzed the regional characteristics and current status of technological application in waste management. The findings indicated that during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China intensified rural domestic waste management, steadily improved policy and standardization frameworks, gradually upgraded the collection, transport, and disposal system (CTDS), and elevated overall governance capacity. By the end of 2025, the proportion of administrative villages with waste collection and transport services had remained stable above 90%; over 95% of administrative villages had conducted rural sanitation campaigns; and more than 18% had implemented fee systems. Nevertheless, China’s rural domestic waste governance still remains in a phase characterized by the issues of addressing “universal coverage” and “quality enhancement”coexist. It faces persistent bottlenecks, including sluggish progress in source separation and waste reduction as well as resource recovery, marked deficiencies in collection, transportation and disposal infrastructure in remote areas, inadequate operational and management capacity, and unsustainable financing mechanisms. To address these core challenges, this paper proposes targeted policy recommendations centering on optimizing the governance layout, deepening source separation and waste reduction with resource recovery, strengthening long-term operation and supervision mechanisms, and improving diversified funding guarantee systems, all with a view to inform the high-quality development of rural domestic waste management during the upcoming 15th Five-Year Plan period.

Key words: rural domestic waste, collection, transport and disposal system, source sorting, long-term operation mechanism