{"id":11471,"date":"2022-12-21T07:30:07","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T07:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/?p=11471"},"modified":"2025-04-23T09:35:23","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T09:35:23","slug":"china-pushes-hard-for-revival-of-decades-old-supply-and-marketing-cooperatives-but-why-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/china-pushes-hard-for-revival-of-decades-old-supply-and-marketing-cooperatives-but-why-now\/","title":{"rendered":"The curious return of China’s ‘gongxiaoshe’ cooperatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following October’s 20th<\/sup> Party Congress, China has started to be more open about its push for the revival of supply and marketing cooperatives \u2013 government backed stores known as gongxiaoshe<\/em> fondly remembered by the country’s elderly folk. Qing Na<\/strong> from Dao Insights<\/strong> explores why the initiative is being revived now<\/h2>\n

Gongxiaoshe<\/em> first emerged in July 1950 and were commonplace in China during the planned economy. Normally found in rural areas, these cooperative stores existed as an outlet for people to exchange ration coupons for corresponding daily necessities. Ultimately, they played a key role in distributing commodities to and purchasing products from about 800 million rural people in China at the time, according to the Beijing Review.<\/p>\n

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Reborn in a market economy<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The term \u2018gongxiaoshe<\/em>\u2019 had long since disappeared from people\u2019s vernacular after China transformed into a market economy at the end of the 1990s, and private businesses and foreign investment made them all but redundant. But now the country has seen a re-emergence of the decades-old designation, with the government once more publicly promoting the idea of supply and marketing cooperatives. Following the conclusion of this year\u2019s National Congress on 26 October, the China Co-op Group announced that it has officially kicked-off recruitment for 2023, and campaigns encouraging young people, particularly those from the post-90s generation, to join local gongxiaoshe<\/em> organisations have been popping up across digital spaces.<\/p>\n

An article published by Hubei Daily in October stated that the central landlocked province of Hubei has restored and reconstructed 1,373 gongxiaoshe<\/em> with 452,000 members. The local cooperatives are also striving to scale up to 1.5 million members by 2025. China Co-op Group reported a total of 400,000 cooperative outlets scattered across the country as of last year, which generated an annual revenue of RMB 6.26 trillion in 2021. That\u2019s a year-on-year increase of 18.9%, accounting for 7% of the country\u2019s total retail sales. This exceeded the combined annual gross merchandise value (GMV) recorded on e-commerce platforms JD.com and Pinduoduo, and close to the RMB 8.12 trillion produced by tech giant Alibaba in 2021.<\/p>\n