There are many similarities and differences between China and the West in the process of rural development. Therefore, China should take the western experience prudently and develop the rural development road in accordance with China’s national conditions. This paper reviewed the historical context of rural development in western countries since the 1940s in order to sort out the evolutionary context of rural development concept, mechanism and behavior subject in western countries. Results show that the western concept of rural development experienced productivism and post-productivism periods in the early stage, and the rural development mechanism gradually evolved from the top-down exogenous development to the bottom-up endogenous development. With the change of economic development concept from Keynesianism to neoliberalism, it finally adopted a multi-function doctrine under the network development model. However, a number of problems still exist, including food security threats in weak agricultural countries, incomplete networks of rural actors, and differences in development between urban and rural areas and among different regions. In addition, this paper also summarizes the development context of China’s countryside since 1949 and divides it into five stages—the initial stage of development, the stage of institutional reform, the stage of deepening reform, the stage of institutional transformation, and the stage of rapid development—to compare with the concept of rural development in western countries. However, compared with the western concept of rural development, China’s rural revitalization is still in its infancy with some problems, including the existence of not-rural and not-grain land, young and middle-aged labor loss and unbalanced regional development. Therefore, combined with foreign experience and China’s actual situation, this paper suggests the following measures to optimize the path of China’s rural revitalization, including 1) the government should coordinate the relationship between food security and policy making; 2) the regulatory authority should handle the relationship between small family business and agricultural modernization, 3) the local community should build a social network to promote the endogenous and exogenous driving force of rural development; and 4) the local governments should adopt differentiated development models tailored according to local conditions.