Objective/Meaning  The rural collective share economic cooperatives are the core of strengthening the rural collective economy and promoting the rural revitalization. In view of the common dilemma of “easy listing and difficult operation” of county-level village cooperatives, Gutian County of Fujian Province was taken as an example to analyze its internal and external development conditions, explore an effective path from formal existence to substantive operation transformation, and provide practical reference for the similar regions.

Methods/Procedures  By taking 280 village cooperatives in Gutian County as the sample, the SWOT analysis method was used to analyze the advantages, disadvantages, external opportunities and challenges. Then, the characteristics of “advantage-opportunity resonance, disadvantage-challenge superposition” were identified. From the four dimensions of industrial synergy, enterprise-society linkage, service empowerment and huddle-up development, the differentiated “village cooperative + ” collaborative paths were constructed, and the responsibility subject and implementation requirements of each path were clarified.

Results/Conclusions  The results showed that: the village cooperatives in Gutian County as a whole were in the transition stage from formal existence to substantive operation. The core crux of restricting its quality and efficiency improvement was the mutual conduction and restriction between the endogenous disadvantages such as the imbalance of governance structure and the lag of financial division and the external challenges such as the inefficiency of asset revitalization and the outflow of talents. The four types of collaborative models constructed could effectively solve the contradiction of structural development, and promote the coordinated upgrading of governance mechanism, operation ability and industrial system.