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Colin Brace's avatar

> Mao's old co-ops sold $1 trillion of food

> Half of Chinese farms are cooperatives

In this particular context, is a cooperative the same as a collective (ie, part of collectivization)? A couple of years ago I watched Isabel Hinton's (daugher of...) Long Bow Trilogy, which documented rural Chinese life in the early 1980s. One of the topics covered quite extensively was the policy of de-collectivization which had been introduced at the time as part of Deng Xiaoping's Opening and Reform process. The Chinese farmers who Hinton interviewed didn't seem very enthusiastic about it, pointing to farm equipment purchased collectively previously that was then gathering dust. Turns out collectivization worked for well them, as did for farmers in the former DDR (cf, Victor Grossman's memoir of the time). Sounds like that in the end de-collectivization wasn't very widespread. Good to hear that these cooperatives are flourishing.

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Alex's avatar

Long live China.

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Amman's avatar

It is really quite ASTOUNDING.

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