An Institutional Review To China Rural Collective Enterprises' Experience

This article attempts to expose the meaning of collective in China legal context by reviewing China rural collective enterprises' experience from coming into being to privatization.After PRC set up on 1 Oct 1949, new government processed land reform by which rural people were distributed farmland according to population. However, due to long period war, rural China was so poor that many peasants were forced to sell their farmland for grain after soon they got it. This did absolutely not agree with ideology of CCP. To deal with this situation, CCP utilized its powerful mobilisation capacity to rural residents, which accumulated in long period revolutionary activities, on the basis of achieved experience on cooporative in revolutionary base and liberated region, and summoned peasants to build all kinds of cooporatives at the aim of developing extractive industry and profiting public and private at the same time. Under the international environment of Cold War, the state established an economic development strategy, which asked for heavy industry taking the priority in national economy at the cost of rural accumulation. Coorporatives was gradually reduced to a tool to extract rural residual value for the state. Initial stages of new regime, peasants were permitted to dwell in cities freely. A great deal of peasants moved into cities that result in grain supply crisis in cities. Subject to the grain pressure, the government has step-by-step set up a series of policies by which the rural residents have been segregated from cities. The people commune system that had maintained from 1958 to 1984 is an important clue to understand the history of rural China society since 1949. This is a painful course that the cooporatives were catabolized into Soviet model collecive economic organizations although the former is also a production of CCP's ideology.The bywork production brigades of the people commune, i.e. commune and drigade run enterprises, which was formed on the basis of rural handcraft industry, are the predecessors of rural collective enterprises. The commune and brigade run enterprises were sometimes warmhearted helped by the policies of CCP and the government, but they were sometimes severely frustrated by the contrary ones. During the Great Steel-making Campaign in 1958, a large quatities of collective enterprises were built up. Only did few of them survive from the thereafter rectification. During the Great Culture Revolution, many factories in cities were involved into political chaos and industry production was serious shortage, a numbers of commune and brigade run enterprises captured the opportunity and accumulated rare capital and experience. After the reform to the inside and open to the outside in China, those rural collective enterprises which had better foundation of commune and brigade run enterprises, had good connection with big and middle cities, especially in the east and south coast areas took the lead in developing regional economy and become thereafter the main force of township and village enterprises.Rural collective enterprises, which are also called rural public-owned enterprises, were established by utilizing all kinds of resources in rural society under the leading of local cadres. As public-owned enterprises, rural collective enterprises cannot avoid common disadvantages of the public-owned enterprises. But in the early stage of economic system reform in China, rural collective enterprises had developed quickly as gaining the benefit both plan and market. However, with the relaxation of political environment and the spread of the market scope, the private-owned enterprises represent more and more competition strength. Rural collective enterprises themselves have reformed their managerial system so as to adapt the need of market competition. After long-term contractual structure readjustment, rural collective enterprises walked on the road of privatization eventually.The ownership and control of the rural collective enterprises is separate from the beginning to the end. The co...