Objective/Meaning  As the emerging governance subject, the new villagers have injected strong impetus and vitality into the rural construction on the one hand, but also greatly challenged the local governance level and service capacity. Through analyzing the current situation of new villagers’ participation in the rural governance in Longtan Village, Pingnan County, Ningde City, Fujian Province, the ideas and reference would be provided for solving the governance dilemma of the same type of “population inversion village”.

  Methods/Procedures  From the perspective of polycentric governance theory, the characteristics of Longtan Village and the current situation of its new villagers’ participation in the rural governance were analyzed.

  Results/Conclusions  The study found that there were some problems existed in the new villagers’ participation in rural governance, such as the low recognition of old villagers, low local identity, weak subject consciousness, imperfect participation mechanism, etc. In view of these problems, some countermeasures were put forward including breaking down the ideological barriers to create good environment for participation, disseminating the idea of new citizens to strengthen the cultivation of subject consciousness, focusing on the mechanism innovation to construct the opening participation system, etc.