The integration, coordination and coevolution of “formal institution” and “informal institution” are significant features of China’s gradual institutional reform, and rural land property rights are no exception. Focusing on the issues of low quality and insufficient land uses under the transformation towards a modern rural industrial structure, this paper explores the adaptation mechanisms and operational guidance strategies of efficient rural land use development. In accordance with the new institutional economics and modern economic growth theory, the paper illustrates the driving force behind rural land use efficiency as a multi-factor system, with stability of land property rights as its core, supported by rational input of production factors. At a macro level, it explains the heterogeneous stability of rural land property rights throughout the country since reform and opening-up, which is a symbiotic integration of legal leadership by the nation, independent creations of village collectives, and coordinated governance of local governments, unpacks the two basic relationships of production factors input and constructs a cognitive logic for the driving forces behind rural land use efficiency under the “Three Rights Separation” pattern. Taking actual states of rural land uses in Zhejiang Province as a research clue, the paper reveals the differentiated characteristics and adaptation mechanisms behind its leap of land use efficiency. Due to constraints such as a prominent contradiction of large population and land and capital shortages, a “trinity rural land” use pattern has emerged in Zhejiang, characterized by interventionist concentration of agricultural land, flexible management of construction land, and a well-developed “informal economy” in residential land in spite of scarce collective commercial land. The approach taken by local governments of Zhejiang regarding land management is to exchange space for time, linking inclusive infrastructure investment with industrial innovation and growth, promoting a model of efficient land use that starts with “single-point activation in villages” to “multi-point linkage in counties” through the operational mechanism of leveraging capable individuals to drive the upgrading and integration of low-dimensional platforms. It helps to realize urbanization and economic development zones externally, regulating rural land use, strengthening collective land ownership and enhancing the supply of rural public goods internally, achieving more significant rural land use improvements compared to other developed coastal provinces. As urbanization enters the stock redevelopment age, the paper summarizes and anticipates the future rural landscape of a county-level “property right-factor-function” land use community, with the merger of collective land property rights, activation of factor through “one share, one voucher”, and the parameterization and quality control of land use, in order to allow business entities with advantages in production factors to assume the responsibility for rural industrial growth while enabling more farmers to voluntarily and decently exit inefficient land use. The reform experience of the “Three Rights Separation” pattern of rural landuse in Zhejiang provides valuable references for other regions across the country, and lays a theoretical foundation and practical basis for further innovation in building a demonstration area for urban and rural common prosperity and in the reform of the rural land property rights. In the future, a balance between the principles of national legal framework and the autonomous exploration of local practices will be the key to continuously improving rural land use efficiency, providing theoretical exploration and practical support for the further establishment of “formal institution”.