Analysis Of Problems And Solutions In The Development Of China's New Type Farmer Cooperatives

The main contradiction of china's rural economic development is between individual farmers'small-scale production and the increasingly competitive large markets, as well as the slow development of rural economy and the improving of farmers'income. To change farmers'weak position in market competition, it is necessary to improve the degree of farmers'organization, establish and improve a new type of farmers'cooperatives, make farmers becoming organized in the competitive market. Following a voluntary, democratic, mutually beneficial principle, new type of cooperatives is a new form of economic organization, which based on the household contract responsibility system to improve their production and living conditions and protect their own interests. The reason we claim it is new is its property is completely different from "cooperatives" of the 50s and people's communes of 60s in 20th century. Growing since the reform and opening up policy, the new type of cooperatives increased by a large extent of farmers'organization and played a significant role in promoting the development of rural economy. However, in the process of its development there are still some problems.First, the imbalance in regional development: the development of new farmer cooperatives has a huge difference in different regions. Generally speaking, in terms of amount and scale of organization, extent of the proportion of farmers involved, the central region is the highest, followed by the eastern and the western region.Second, minor scale, small amount, low coverage and degree of organization of farmers: after 20 years of development, the new farmer cooperatives are still not able to raise a greater degree of organization of farmers yet.Third, the irrational industrial distribution: the new areas of cooperation of farmers cooperatives are rather narrow, it is difficult to form the radiation function of markets for agricultural products. On the one hand, the development of new types of rural cooperatives in all sectors has an obvious difference. On the other hand, new types of rural cooperatives in the range of services mainly concentrated in the areas of agricultural production, the real access to higher value-added agricultural areas such as highly profitable marketing of agricultural products, agricultural products processing, product marketing, are rather rare.Fourthly, the internal operation of cooperatives is not standardized: first, the organization and management mechanism is not standardized, configuration is unreasonable and management system is flawed; second, the distribution mechanism of benefits is defective, in practice there are many members do not understand the distribution system; third, supervision system is incomplete, externally there is no specialized supervision regulatory structure, internally there is no effective checks and balances oversight bodies.The constraints of further development of cooperatives is mainly reflected in the aspects of the ideological understanding and the external environment.First, there is a lack of understanding on cooperatives among farmers and local government: for the farmers themselves, because of the shadow of history and their own conservative characteristic, they do not have a strong will to participate in a new type of cooperatives. What's more, a number of leaders in relevant governmental departments especially the ones in grass-roots levels have so many doubts and even prejudices about the development of the cooperatives, that in practice its development is not really active.Second, externally the development of new types of rural cooperatives is not easy: As the immature market environment in China, the State cooperative purchasing and marketing system plays a lot of restrictions on cooperatives, purchase of the grain, oil, cotton and other staple agricultural products is still monopolized by the government, unless the government takes the initiative to let go, cooperatives in general is very difficult to enter this field; In addition, the government's management of the cooperative system is not smooth, cooperatives in China is under multi-management instead of uniform management, as Agriculture, Association for Science and Technology, Home, Business and other departments are involved in the management, resulting in unaware of power, disorder of system and unclear of responsibility, in practice it often leads to "step up when there is benefit, step aside when there is none" chaos; further more, government has not granted cooperatives enough support. To be specific, cooperatives can only gain support from the Farmers' Professional Cooperatives Law which is macro without micro-details, resulting in inter-sectoral's buckpassing in actual implementation, and the lack of effective supervision of authority, etc, making financial support and preferential policies not putting in place; last but not least, scarcity of professionals with modern cooperative knowledge, legal and management know-how is another factor.Because the development of china's farmer cooperatives exists a series of problems, we need to learn advanced experiences from developed countries. The situation with Japan prior to the implementation of the modernization of rural areas have a strong similarity: we are both East Asia countries of small-scale peasant economy, small-scale production for large market, Japan's production scale is 22 acres of agricultural land in national average, ours is 10. Therefore, we can learn from Japan's successful experiences of cooperatives to promote China's development of new types of rural cooperatives.Based on the above analysis, according to national conditions of China's agricultural cooperatives and the successful experiences of Japan, the strategy of developing and improving new types of rural cooperatives should be located in the following points:First, the realization of changes in the roles of party and government in the construction of cooperatives: in the early stage of setting up new types of rural cooperatives, government should play a leading role, use typical model to promote rapid development and growth of cooperatives; once the market economy develops to a certain maturity stage and the overall organizational and operating capacity of farmers has increased, government should play a guiding role, gradually withdraw from the cooperatives, guide instead of lead; at the same time build a service-oriented government to provide services for cooperatives, the township government at the grass-roots level should provide micro and macro services arranged in stages and phases. Also, service content and methods should be keeping up with the times in order to provide additional services for the high-speed development of cooperatives.Second, enhance the quality of the external environment of new type of cooperatives: First of all, enact the supporting program for "Farmers' Professional Cooperatives Law" as soon as possible. These policy options should include agricultural projects, finance, taxation, regulatory oversight, the farmers training etc, and preferential central policies should be practically implemented; Second, increase investment in agriculture, establish a sound rural credit cooperative system; Third, develop rural public utilities, establish agricultural insurance system. In the future, rural roads, public facilities, education and other public development can take many forms: in some strong collective economic rural areas, those can still be borne by the collective economy; in township enterprises developed areas, village and township enterprises should be encouraged to take responsibility; in the areas of poverty and backwardness, it should be subsidized by the government to help finance its development; Finally, deepen agricultural market reform and improve the agricultural market system.Third, it is necessary to regulate internal operations in cooperatives: First, further improve the operation mechanism within the organization, establish and improve internal organization, improve the mechanism of internal management and distribution of benefits, improve the supervision of cooperatives restraint mechanism, governmental departments should be in accordance with national laws and regulations of the cooperative work of supervision and the need to give full play to the board of supervisors and members of the oversight functions, strengthen management, especially the supervision of the financial situation, identify problems and resolve them in a timely manner; Second, develop a variety of multi-modality of cooperatives according to local conditions. There exists a gap between China's east-west development, the operational condition and organizational strength of the existing cooperatives are quite diffident. Therefore, different cooperative development models should be explored in line with local conditions and the characteristics of regional industries.The conclusion summarizes the new type of cooperatives in China as a third sector, its development and growth has important theoretical and practical significance. It plays a positive role in the aspects of increasing the income of the farmers, achieving agricultural modernization, improving the international competitiveness of agriculture and so on. At the same time, researching into new types of rural cooperatives and promoting its further development has great importance in strengthening the third sector of rural society and further improving the governance structure of rural community.