Abstract: In recent years, the ‘general principle' planning for rural areas has served as a crucial approach to rural planning and management in China. This paper focuses on the challenges encountered in the ‘town-village' transmission process of territorial spatial planning. First, it analyzes the practical difficulties in ‘town-village' transmission, and identifies prominent issues in the hierarchical connection, planning basis, and transmission mechanism between township-level planning and village-level planning. Additionally, the current planning process faces problems such as high preparation costs, difficulties in implementation, and insufficient dynamic adjustments. To address these issues, the ‘general principle' planning enhances county-level coordination, integrates policy tools, and adopts digital management by clarifying its scope of application, core content, and innovative methods. This not only fills gaps in the existing system but also reduces the workload of grassroots-level authorities and promotes targeted governance. Combined with the specific practical application in a town in Northeast China, through ‘rigid-flexible combination' management and concise expression of results, the ‘general principle' planning effectively resolves the difficulties and bottlenecks in rural planning management, thereby providing strong support for the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy.