Abstract: Rapid urbanization and industrialization are accompanied with rural-urban migration and the recombination and interaction of socioeconomic development factors, which result in the restructuring of rural socioeconomic system and spatial configuration, including the migration of rural people, non- agricultural transition of employment, industrial development, and land use change. These changes break the traditional rural-urban dual structure and result in the overall rural transformation and development. In reality, there is often a lack of coordination between the transformation of rural development factors, which means the transition speed of one rural development factor is faster or slower than that of others. To some extent, this uncoordinated transformation hinders the sustainable development of the rural or the whole rural-urban system. Therefore, it is particularly important to analyze the coordination of transition of rural development factors. Shandong Province, located in the coastal area of eastern China, has experienced drastic changes in land use since the initiation of economic reforms in 1978. Rapid urbanization and industrialization boosted the development in the rural areas. Shandong has similar primary industry structure and similar urbanization rate to China's average. In addition, there is a clear gradient of regional economic growth from the eastern to the central and western parts of the province, which is extremely similar to the general spatial pattern of economic development in China. As such, Shandong Province can be considered a miniature of rural economic development in China. This paper selects Shandong Province as the case study area to analyze the development of rural area from the viewpoints of transformation and coordination. This paper integrates the methods of traditional geographical research and analysis, simulation of quantitative model and decision support system based on the "3S" technology to establish a coordinated transformation degree model and a three- dimensional space of rural transformation degree, integrated coordination degree and coordinated transformation degree, based on the three major rural development elements of population, land and industry. The relationship between rural transformation speed and the coordination characteristics of transformations of rural development elements in Shandong Province was analyzed from the viewpoint of "transformation" and "coordination". The main conclusions are as follows. (1) The spatial pattern of rural transformation degree gradually changed from local clustering to overall dispersion; the distribution of integrated coordination degree took on a dispersion pattern with some small clusters; the spatial pattern of coordinated transformation degree was coupled with that of rural transformation degree during 1990-1995 and 1995-2000, coupled with that of rural transformation degree and integrated coordination degree during 2000-2005, and coupled with the spatial pattern of integrated coordination degree during 2005-2009. (2) The correlation coefficient of rural transformation degree and coordinated transformation degree, and that of integrated coordination degree and coordinated transformation degree are 0.92 and 0.61, respectively. These results indicate that the overall flow of the development elements of population, land and industry between rural and urban systems will promote the coordinated transformation of rural areas. (3) "Transformation" and "coordination" represent the "quantity" and "quality" of development, which should be paid equal attention during the process of rural transformation and development.