Social scientists hold the viewpoint that it was the Chinese peasants who pushed the rural reform from bottom up. However, based on the analysis of oral history resources from Anhui province, one of the first provinces to start rural reform, this paper finds that the political leaders played an irreplaceable role during this process. In the late period of collectivization, the old governance model of the Party-state had been eroded, and the divergence of opinions among the Party gave an opportunity to the regional experiments. The reformers successfully grasped and condensed the villagers’ aspiration of reform through flexible adjustments of policies during special circumstances. They made possible of policy modification through regional "experimental units". In the end, they transformed the farmers’ "survival ethics"to the ideological discourse of the Party state to maintain the legitimacy and consistency of the state image during the market transformation.