The mention of “supply and marketing cooperatives,” or gongxiaoshe in Chinese, brings a sense of reminiscence for many in China. With the full name of rural supply and marketing cooperatives, they played a key role in the country’s planned economy era.
Through the unified management of the government, such cooperatives used to play a dominant role in distributing commodities to and purchasing products from about 800 million rural people in China.
Since the launch of reform and opening up in the late 1970s, the private business boom and the entry of foreign investment have gradually stolen the thunder of the cooperatives, which have made many
