<p>The cash crop cooperatives are capable of exhibiting good performance even under government control in China, which sparked our curiosity to open the “black box” of government intervention and observe the multiple performance changes across economic, social, and climate change domains which caused by the differences in the cooperative governance structure. With data obtained through a field survey of cooperatives, in this paper we construct mathematical models and empirical strategies to explore how the government influences the performance of cooperatives by intervening in the governance structure, results show that the degree of government intervention will indeed cause the comprehensive performance of cooperatives to show an inverted U-shaped curve change, and because of the “threshold effect” on the level of government intervention, excessive intervention needs to be superseded by encouraging and mobilizing cooperative members' enthusiasm for production and exercising their autonomy in the long run.</p>