Since reform and opening up, China’s economic relations have undergone significant changes, in which the changes of various relations in the production process play a decisive role in the changes of economic relations. Therefore, combing the realistic evolution path of China’s relations of production in the past 40 years and refining the internal theoretical mechanism of its evolution are of great significance for summing up the 40 years’ experience of reform and opening up. Based on the basic law that productive forces determine production relations and production relations react to the productive forces, this paper holds that it is necessary to study the realistic path and internal logic of the evolution of production relations from the perspective of the mode of production and in the dynamic interaction between productive forces and production relations.　　On the one hand, this paper divides the realistic evolution of the mode of production in the past 40 years of reform and opening up into three stages according to interaction between productive forces and production relations. Firstly, the exploratory period of the quantitative mode of production （1978-1997）, during which the reform of production relations and the development of productive forces in China have promoted the " planned mode of production” into the " quantitative mode of production”. Secondly, during the deepening period of the quantitative production mode （1998-2012）, the development of productive forces and production relations jointly promoted the continuous development and stability of the quantitative production mode in China. Thirdly, during the exploration period of the quality production mode （from 2013 to the present）, China’s quality-based production mode is actively formed and promoted. However, in this period the role of productive forces still needs to be further stimulated, and the synergy between productive forces and production relations has not been fully established yet.　　On the other hand, this paper sums up the theoretical mechanism of the evolution of China’s relations of production by fully combining Marxist classical logic with the practice of China’s reform in the field of production. Namely, the dynamic adaptation between productive forces and production relations is the logical main line; " people-centered” is the internal axis; the government control is the macro-guarantee of the evolution of China’s production relations. And these key elements interact with each other to promote the evolution and development of China’s production relations. The above theoretical mechanism is actually the summary and refinement of the practice of the reform of production relations since reform and opening up, and also a valuable experience in the process of socialist market economy construction in China.