Abstract: Experience of rural transformation in developed countries can greatly contribute to following the laws of rural development in China. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to propose some suggestions on the path of rural development under the uniqueness of Chinese rural areas. The process of rural transformation was also summarized to extract the common characteristics of rural development in developed countries. Literature and empirical analysis were made in this case. The results show that rural development in developed countries presented some common evolutionary characteristics, in terms of functional value, economic system, settlement space, social structure, and government policies. Specifically, the functional value of the rural was generally included in three stages: from the stage of the "productivism dominated by agricultural functions" to the "post productivism with the rapidly improved ecological and cultural functions", and finally to the stage of "urban and rural equivalence with coordinated development of multiple functions". There were some changes in the rural economic system. Specifically, the industry was dominated by the non-agricultural industry rather than agriculture. The business entities were small business owners, rather than farmers. The economic policies were focused on rural space management rather than agricultural subsidies. There was also a different social structure from the past. Social subjects were changed from the single to the collective. The social structure was changed from tightness to looseness. The social connections were changed from the closed to the open. The social values were changed from homogeneity to heterogeneity. Social management was changed from internal autonomy to external governance. Correspondingly, the overall scale of villages was reduced in terms of village changes, indicating the clustering of village layouts, the differentiation of village types, the hierarchies of villages, and the diversification of village spaces. More importantly, the rural policies were also keeping pace with the change of rural functions: the policy concept was the equalization of urban and rural areas, instead of the countryside serving the city; the policy content was focused on the comprehensive rural regional policies rather than single sectoral policies; the driving force was endogenous development, rather than just exogenous development; the implementation path was the multi-subject synergy rather than top-down. There was a significant difference in rural development, compared with developed countries. It infers that the individual farmers were the main body of rural development in China for a long time. In addition, there were still some difficulties over a long period of time, such as the urban-rural dual structure, single rural industry, the weak county economy, shortage of local jobs, deposited production factors, and hollow villages. The effective supply of food can be the primary and long-term task of rural construction, due to the national conditions of more people and less land. Meanwhile, there is the accelerated diversification of rural social mobility and the transformation of the spatial structure of settlements under the background environment of “new industrialization, informatization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization”. Worryingly, there are still institutional obstacles to narrowing the gap between the urban and rural areas for comprehensive rural revitalization. A comparison was made between the rural characteristics in China and developed countries. Some suggestions were proposed for the development of China's rural. 1) The concept of urban-rural equivalence needs to be established for the rural multi-function. 2) Food security should be ensured on the road of agricultural modernization on a moderate scale. 3) The rural secondary and tertiary industries should be introduced, the small towns and industrial parks should be developed as the growth poles. 4) The rural space should be optimized with the shrewd shrinkage theory, in order to promote the efficient use of land resources. 5) The local agricultural culture should be consolidated to protect, inherit, develop and utilize. 6) The mechanism and policy should be innovated to activate the rural endogenous power using a regional development policy system.