Industrial development to increase rural income is the link between targeted poverty alleviation and rural revitalization. And it is also a key to free flow of production factors between urban and rural areas. However, the current path of industrial development to increase rural income is not clear and needs clarification. Based on the data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), this study analyzed the paths and experiences of industrial development to increase rural income of typical countries worldwide, explored the performing mechanisms of human capital enhancement mode, ecological efficiency enhancement mode and organizational efficiency enhancement mode, and discussed the paths of rural revitalization and industrial development to increase rural income in China. Results show that the modes of industrial development to increase rural income mainly included human capital enhancement mode represented by the United States, ecological efficiency enhancement mode represented by South Korea, and organizational efficiency enhancement mode represented by Japan, which are of great reference significance for China’s path of industrial development to increase rural income. The evolution path of China’s rural industrial development to increase rural income from 1949 to 2019 can be divided into four stages, including slow change, gradual improvement, overall adjustment, and industrial integration. Due to the obvious differences in the modes and paths of industrial enrichment in different regions, it is necessary to explore the modes of rural industrial development to increase rural income in accordance to local conditions in different regions. On one hand, rural industrial development to increase rural income needs to be achieved step by step; On the other hand, it needs to follow the steps from extraction of data, knowledge base and node, to identify the key constraint factors, and then to evaluate the input-output performance, and to diagnose the weak points (vulnerability, elasticity, threshold, and inflection points) in the development process, thus to provide scientific criteria for the path identification and evaluation.