Objective/Meaning  In the context of the current policy of promoting the mutual-aid elderly care services in China, how to transform the traditional spontaneous mutual assistance in ethnic villages into the standardized and sustainable modern elderly care services has become a key issue.

Methods/Procedures  From the perspective of public service cooperative production theory, and based on the field investigation and interview data of M village in Yunnan, the foundations, constraints and paths of the institutionalized transformation of mutual-aid elderly care services were studied.

Results/Conclusions  The study found that the mutual-aid ethics, the village elders and the elderly association have laid the foundation for institutional transformation, but this process was constrained by the four major obstacles of subject coordination, organization undertaking, rule guarantee and resource linkages. Therefore, it was necessary to promote the progressive path centered on “basic rules, organizational mechanisms and technical resources” under the framework of cooperative production. The key conditions for the institutionalization of traditional mutual-aid resources were clarified in this study, which could provide practical reference for the development of mutual-aid elderly care services in relevant regions.