Abstract: Rural landscape plays a significant role in the spatial disparity of rural characteristics. This article identifies the spatial scale of rural landscape characteristics analysis based on the concept of ‘viewsheds’. By interpreting the form compositions of rural landscape characteristics, five components of characteristics are composed, including geomorphology, vegetation, land use, crops, and weather. Then, several methodological and technological issues related to the type identification and regionalization of rural landscape characteristics are discussed, and further 72 characteristics types of rural landscape in China are identified. Based on the landscape images presented by rural landscape in each region, the preliminary plan of Chinese rural landscape characteristic regionalization is composed, containing 11 rural landscape characteristic regions and 55 rural landscape characteristic sub-regions.