The construction of village-level supply and marketing cooperatives and
The logic of development
- Author:Yang Qian -
Village-level supply and marketing cooperatives are a new phenomenon that has emerged in the construction of grass-roots organizations in the supply and marketing cooperative system in recent years. The reason why it is new is because from the perspective of the organizational system, supply and marketing cooperatives are generally five levels, that is, grass-roots cooperatives, counties, cities, provinces and national headquarters. These five levels correspond to the hierarchy of government.
We generally say that the grass-roots supply and marketing cooperatives are the most basic organizations of the supply and marketing cooperatives, which are usually built in townships and towns, and very few go to the villages, and at most there may be branches of the grass-roots cooperatives. Therefore, the establishment of supply and marketing cooperatives at the village level in the past two years has become a new thing that has attracted people's attention.
So, what is the background of the construction of village-level supply and marketing cooperatives? Is it a new model for the construction of grass-roots organizations of supply and marketing cooperatives? What role can it play in the development of future supply and marketing cooperatives?
I think these questions are worthy of serious study by the comrades of the supply and marketing cooperative system.
The logic of the construction and development of village-level supply and marketing cooperatives
Village-level supply and marketing cooperatives first appeared in Tongling City, Anhui Province. Judging from the background of its development, it can almost be said that it is a product of "making something out of nothing". Under the impact of the market economy, the grass-roots cooperatives under the original system of Tongling City were basically completely destroyed, so the organizational foundation of supply and marketing cooperatives was very weak, and some of the remaining management forces were concentrated in the cities, and the service to agricultural production and the support for farmers were minimal. Since a considerable number of grass-roots communities still have this debt burden, reconstruction is facing great difficulties. It should be said that for some time now, this situation of grass-roots societies has existed in many places.
With the goal of restoring grass-roots organizations, Tongling Supply and Marketing Cooperatives has explored a way to gradually restore the organizational system of supply and marketing cooperatives from the establishment of village-level supply and marketing cooperatives. The basic practice is to rely on village-level collective economic organizations or villagers' committees to jointly form village-level supply and marketing cooperatives, the nature of registration is a limited company, the principle of composition is controlled by collective economic organizations or villagers' committees, large rural households and other willing peasant households join as individual members, and supply and marketing cooperatives as a party basically do not contribute capital, under special circumstances, a small amount of capital will be contributed, accounting for a limited proportion.
Although due to the restrictions of laws and regulations on registration, village-level supply and marketing cooperatives can only be registered in the form of limited companies, but because the village collective economic organization or villagers' committee is the controlling party, a de facto pattern of collective control by farmers has been formed. As a result, the representation of their farmers is much higher than that of professional cooperatives in general. In practice, the legal representatives of all village-level supply and marketing cooperatives are served by the responsible persons of the two village committees, which makes the village-level supply and marketing cooperatives a collective economic platform that the two village committees can use.
This is the maximum value of village-level supply and marketing cooperatives. This value comes from the defects in the design of the collective economic organization system after the reform of rural collective economic organizations. In the reform of rural collective economic organizations that began in 2016, after the process of liquidating assets and verifying funds and confirming rights, the rural collectives in most places have received the registration certificate of "** village collective shareholding economic cooperative" from the agricultural and rural departments, but due to the lag of laws and regulations and other economic and social factors, there are still many practical obstacles for collective economic organizations to become a complete legal entity to enter the market. Some of these obstacles are brought about by institutional design, some are formed by the current system of rural management, and some are unique to China's rural culture.
According to the current situation of Rural Collective Economic Organizations in China, there are some obstacles that need to be overcome in order to truly become effective legal persons.
The first is the complex structure of equity settings. Due to historical reasons, the equity settings within many rural collective economic organizations are very complicated, and the basis for setting up is not entirely based on assets. On November 4, 2020, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued the "Model Charter of Rural Collective Economic Organizations (Trial)", which involves four types of equity settings: population shares, labor age shares, poverty alleviation shares, and respect for the elderly shares, each of which has its own reasons. People who know a little bit about economics know that the more complex the setting of equity, the more complex the decision-making process may be, and the more complex the pattern of interest distribution will be. The result of this situation is the diversification of the pattern of interests, which inevitably makes the collective economic organization a complex organization.
The second is the design of the decision-making mechanism. The "Model Charter of Rural Collective Economic Organizations (Trial Implementation)" stipulates that the general assembly of members of rural collective economic organizations is the highest authority, composed of all members of the organization with full capacity for civil conduct (in fact, the identification of members is not a simple matter), and one person, one vote, half of general matters are passed, and more than two-thirds of major matters are passed. Elect the Council as the body for day-to-day decision-making, management and implementation. Although the board of directors appears to have operational authority, the board meeting also implements a one-person, one-vote voting method, and the formation of resolutions must be collectively discussed and approved by half of the directors. The organization is complete, but this architecture makes the organization inefficient.
The third is the special village-community relationship. In the countryside, there is also a complex layer of relationship, that is, the relationship between village communities. The two are likely to be both intersecting and differentiated in terms of assets and people. Generally speaking, most people are both villagers and members of rural collective organizations, but there are indeed many villages where some people may be villagers and not necessarily members of collective economic organizations, even if they are villagers, there is a difference between a new and old villager. This is determined by a series of reform policies and reform timing. From the perspective of economic relations, between villagers and villagers, between villagers and social groups, between social groups and social groups, between social groups and village communities, and between village communities and village committees, although the economic connection may be very weak, it is not a group in the economic sense, but it is intertwined in various social relations. It is as if the members of a family company have both family and social identities, and family identity is likely to influence social identity decisions. It is not easy to ask rural members to be able to handle such identity conversions. Therefore, it is very difficult for rural collective economic organizations to operate without distraction.
The fourth is the management system. In recent years, the grass-roots governments have strengthened the management of the rural areas, and although the operation of collective assets is the authority of the rural collective economic organizations, in reality the collective assets are only book assets, the village finances and townships are managed, and the villages do not even have accounting, only the responsibility of bookkeeping, and the autonomy of the two village committees to spend money is very small, let alone investment and operation. Although to a certain extent this violates the right to development of village collectives, in order to prevent excessive market behaviors such as industrial and commercial capital going to the countryside to seize land and buy villages and build houses, the conflict of interest between village collectives and local governments can also be implemented because of the support of a relatively reasonable distribution mechanism. Under this management method, it is difficult to expect that collective economic organizations can engage in any kind of operation.
Finally, there is the mentality of the village cadres. In the environment of design and accountability of the above-mentioned system, it has created an extremely complex working environment for village cadres. At present, many villages have very few operating assets, and the external conditions are already very difficult to guarantee the agricultural loan guarantee institutions of collective economic organizations, and the above-mentioned contradictions must be faced as long as they do things, and under such circumstances, it is impossible for village cadres to obtain incentives from collective economic organizations. This has led to the fact that even if village cadres want to be officials, they do not want to easily use the platform of collective economic organizations. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand the current situation of virtual collective economic organization.
In my opinion, there are too many factors to balance in the design of the system, and the pursuit of fairness is too much, so that the efficiency of the organization is greatly limited. In this case, the source of income of rural collective economic organizations almost invariably comes from leasing, that is, leasing the resource assets that the collective can control to industrial and commercial enterprises or large households. This is a way of income with less risk and fewer contradictions. The reality is that most villages may not be really operating. Of course, leasing can also increase collective income, and the collective can make some public inputs or improve the welfare of collective members, which has a positive effect on the preservation and appreciation of collective assets.
A considerable number of rural collective economic organizations have almost no collective assets, or only have very few collective assets, and collective economic organizations with some resource assets cannot obtain income through operation, and can only rely on asset lease income to provide benefits for collective economic organizations. To put it mildly, this is an economic issue, and if it is heavy, this is even more a governance issue, which has a bearing on the party's ruling foundation in the rural areas. Therefore, to solve such problems and give play to the functions of rural collective economic organizations is a matter of principle for consolidating the party's ruling foundation in rural areas.
It is in this sense that the experience of building village-level supply and marketing cooperatives explored by Tongling Supply and Marketing Cooperatives is very worthy of study. According to the current model of construction, village-level supply and marketing cooperatives can be said to be cooperative economic organizations with collective participation of peasants established under the guidance of supply and marketing cooperatives, and they are established on the basis of collective economic organizations or villagers' committees. Compared with professional cooperatives, it is a share of all members and operates on assets belonging to the collective; compared with collective economic organizations, it is a cooperative economic organization derived from collective economic organizations, because it adopts the form of a limited company, which makes it more convenient for collective economic organizations to enter the market and its system is more effectively connected with the market; compared with grass-roots supply and marketing cooperatives, it increases the participation of peasant members and the degree of interest connection. The supply and marketing cooperatives, which have gradually become estranged from the peasants in the process of urbanization, have a local form of organization, and can even be regarded as grass-roots cooperatives. In the view of the township party committee and government, the village-level supply and marketing cooperatives are the supply and marketing cooperatives re-established by the peasants, which can be regarded as an extension of the organizational system of the supply and marketing cooperatives, and have become a grasping hand for the grass-roots party committees and governments to guide the rural collective economic organizations, which can effectively distinguish between the functions of the government and the operation functions of the collective economic organizations, and fully mobilize the enthusiasm of the cadres of the two village committees; and for the cadres of the two village committees, the village-level supply and marketing cooperatives are business organizations that have been approved by the members' congress and supported by the township party committee and government. Once established, it operates in accordance with the operating rules of the limited company, and there are rules to follow, which avoids the contradictions of the village community, and can also establish an incentive mechanism in accordance with the operating rules, so as to do things more steadily.
Frankly speaking, the significance of village-level supply and marketing cooperatives is now more manifested in organizational construction, and their economic significance is still gradually being reflected. According to the Tongling Supply and Marketing Cooperative, they just designed a system and embedded it in rural collective economic organizations. The establishment of village-level supply and marketing cooperatives is not essentially an investment activity, but the organization and construction of supply and marketing cooperatives, and it is the help of supply and marketing cooperatives to the development of rural collective economic organizations through systematic resources and advantages. In Tongling City, some village-level supply and marketing cooperatives have realized the operation of collective assets, and even some villages that have no collective assets at all can carry out businesses that could not be taken over in the past in the name of village-level supply and marketing cooperatives; some village-level supply and marketing cooperatives have begun to directly invest in the operation of breeding and breeding business, and even return to the land for collective management. The benefits of these collective operations are mainly reflected in the village-level supply and marketing cooperatives, and for the municipal supply and marketing cooperatives that account for fewer shares, the economic benefits are actually only preliminary. However, what is certain is that the relationship between the supply and marketing cooperatives at the upper and lower levels formed by this method of building grass-roots organizations is closer, more economically integrated, and more likely to produce a cluster effect than the upper and lower levels of the cooperatives we have seen now.
According to the design of the comprehensive reform of supply and marketing cooperatives in Document No. 11 of 2015, the supply and marketing cooperative system implements double-line operation. As the frontline of the construction of the organizational system, in recent years, the main thing to be carried out is the restoration and reconstruction of grass-roots organizations, which is the lifeline that determines the value of supply and marketing cooperatives. In the instructions to supply and marketing cooperatives in 2020, the leaders pointed out that party committees and governments at all levels should continue to run supply and marketing cooperatives well around accelerating the modernization of agriculture and rural areas and consolidating the party's ruling foundation in rural areas. In my opinion, extending the organization of supply and marketing cooperatives to villages and achieving organizational integration with peasants so that collective economic organizations can have an effective platform for operation is an effective way for supply and marketing cooperatives to play a role in consolidating the party's ruling foundation in rural areas.
For village-level supply and marketing cooperatives, it is entirely predictable that organizational construction will be transformed into something that will have economic benefits for the supply and marketing cooperative system. The development of agriculture and rural areas is fundamentally the development of a resource industry, and the basis for the survival of agricultural cooperatives all over the world is resources, and the means of obtaining resources is the membership, and members are the basis for the survival of cooperatives, because the resources of members can become the resources operated by cooperatives. At present, for supply and marketing cooperatives, what is missing is the connection with the local interests of the peasants, and without the locality, the value of the cooperative will be discounted, and it may be squeezed out of the field of resources, and can only rely on circulation means to operate, including the use of market means to obtain resources, which is the economic connection we are talking about now. I think that the establishment of supply and marketing cooperatives in the village, the gradual establishment of organizational connections, and the development of them towards economic linkages are of great importance to the development of supply and marketing cooperatives.
Of course, if the rural collective economic organization system is further reformed and improved, and in the course of theoretical and institutional exploration, the main position of independent development that truly gives the village collective economic organization the unity of rights and responsibilities becomes a major institutional arrangement that manages the long term, the fundamentals, the overall situation, and can be practically operated, and its endogenous driving force is stimulated, then perhaps the environment for the construction of supply and marketing cooperatives at the village level will be very different. From the current point of view, from the current situation in the countryside, this is very difficult, so there are excellent opportunities for supply and marketing cooperatives.
Some people may ask, if the village-level supply and marketing cooperatives are registered as a limited company and provide a business platform for rural collective economic organizations, they can solve the problem of their operations, so why should the supply and marketing cooperatives do it? The village collective can easily register a limited company in cooperation with any one enterprise. Legally speaking, there is no difference between a limited company. But who to work with, the difference is great. Supply and marketing cooperatives are cooperative economic organizations serving agriculture under the leadership of the party and an important carrier for the party and the government to do a good job in the work of "three rural areas." So that local party committees and governments and local collective economic organizations can realize this, things will be completely different.
Supply and marketing cooperatives are a two-line system, but we cannot absolutize the rule of double-line operation. At the village level, the intersection of the two lines into a line is in line with the principle of cooperative economic organization of supply and marketing cooperatives and the principle of separating government from enterprises, and in the long run, it may become the foundation of the life of supply and marketing cooperatives.