Abstract: Large scientific facilities are important material conditions for meeting national strategic needs and building a powerful country in science and technology.Facility construction and operation is achieved through the facilities project, the success of which depends on the cooperation between the participants. However, there is a clear divergence in values, interests and goals among the central and local government, research institutes and enterprises. The process and mechanism of their cooperation have not been fully discussed. Through field research on several large scientific facilities in the PRD region, the study found that the facilities project is a process of building actor networks centered around research institutions (focal actors), which has gone through four stages: problem identification and solution provision, alignment of interests and fixed roles, establishing different types of cooperative connections, activation of participants and maintenance of the network. The building experience, team strength, communication and coordination skills, social connections and political resources of the focal actors are essential to achieve project cooperation. Secondly, the key to cooperation is that the facility project programme meets the interests of all parties. The motivations of actors in public sector-led government-industry-academia-research collaborations are more complex and diverse, with the satisfaction of national or overall interests being the highest priority. Thirdly, the primary challenge to collaboration is the lack of knowledge and misunderstanding of large science facilities, which requires lots of science popularization work. This gives the focal actors opportunity to rephrasing and redefining participants’ problems, and the lobbying process largely influences the image of the facility's role in the eyes of local authorities and the public. Lastly, the outstanding problem of cooperation is the coordination and motivation of project organization and management. Even if the core actors succeed in building a collaborative network, conflicts of objectives and interests between actors persist and affect the efficiency of project management due to our current project management system. Further discussion demonstrates network resilience and reconfiguration. On one hand, the network of actors has a certain degree of resilience in the face of risk and failure, and is able to adapt strategic objectives and courses of action in response to changes in the environment. On the other hand, the generation of new facility operating networks can effectively improve the operational efficiency of large scientific facilities because of the increased sharing of resources. This article expands the research on the cooperation between government, industry, academia, and research in the field of basic science research, and enriches the practical experience of the operation of China's large scientific facility projects.