With the rapid development of economy and urbanization in China, rural population and rural settlements are undergoing dramatic changes since the reform and opening up of China. As a major research field of rural geography, the problems on rural settlements has been attached more attention by academic. Firstly this paper briefly outlines foreign research progress and tendency of rural settlements based on consulting extensive related literature and believes that the relevant foreign research and development trends of the subject are very worth learning by domestic researchers. In recent years, research on rural settlements abroad has been shifted to social and cultural perspective under the background of multi-disciplinary integration and the reconstruction of rural settlements is pay more attention. Research content on rural settlements abroad is more extensive and in-depth meanwhile it also emphasizes on the practical values of the research and use of geography information technology. Then the research progress and existing problems of Chinese rural settlements are reviewed by using literature analysis method and comparative analysis method from the perspective of geography. The recent research on Chinese rural settlements is focused on the following six aspects:1) research on location of rural settlements, 2) research on scale of rural settlements, 3) research on type and classification of rural settlements, 4) research on hierarchy of rural settlements, 5) research on spatial structure of rural settlements, and 6) research on evolution of spatial characteristics of rural settlements. Finally, this article also forecast priorities and direction of future research from the geographic perspective based on the basis of analyzing overseas and domestic research progress of rural settlements mentioned above.