China's Rural Credit Cooperatives Reform: The Perspective Of Historical Evolution

China's Rural Credit Cooperatives (CRCCS), As the most important supplier side of the china's rural financial system, State Council launched a new round reform of its from 2003. In front of us there are important issues that how to evaluate china's credit cooperative reform scientifically and objectively, and how to explored the strategic direction of the next step reform of CRCCS. Credit unions as a special kind of cooperative economic organization, there is a very similar operation mechanism on the global. Some countries have established or are establishing well operation mechanism and modern architecture of the credit cooperative organization (CCO). Fully understand the origin of CCO and its evolution history in major countries is helpful for us to deeply understand the basic properties of it, to explore the basic law of development of CCO, and to grasp the next strategic directions of the reform of CRCCS.From the perspective of historical evolution, this paper attempt to clearly describe the origin of CCO and its development path in typical countries, and try to find the general development law of it. The main contents of this article can be divided into the following sections:the first section is introduction. This section includes the research background, research purpose, research object, research method, research framework, and innovation or shortcoming of the research. The second section is about the origin of CCO. The third section is about CCO's development in typical countries. This section analyses the CCO's develop course of Germany, Italy, the United States, France, Japan and other countries, and also introduces the CCO's latest development in the world. Through comparing the develop course in different countries, we obtain some basic conditions for CCO's healthy development. This section mainly uses the descriptive method of economic history, and use quantitative analysis to explore the development characteristics of typical countries. In the forth section, we first analyze the reform and development proceeding of CRCCs, and then use the Yaron's framework of rural financial agencies performance evaluation to found the performance evaluation framework of CRCCS reform. Finally we put the CCO in the entire socio-economic environment, propose the soil conditions of CCO's healthy development. The five section is main conclusions and policy proposal.Through the vertical comparison (the CCO's development process of one country) and the horizontal comparison (the CCO's development process of different countries) two dimensions, as well as the evaluation of the reform of rural credit cooperatives in China, the main conclusions of this paper has the following three aspects:The first is about the credit cooperative organization itself, There are:①About the concept of CCO, I think that the CCO is that people based on mutual confidence and trust put their credit (this credit in the real world is typically representative by currency and the claims and liabilities arising from currency) formed cooperative financial institutions that with color of strong mutual.②"voluntary, self-entitlement, self-help" is the most essential features of CCO.③CCO is essentially the people's co-operation rather than capital's cooperation.④Although the same as a deposit-taking financial institutions, CCO and commercial banks are qualitative differences.⑤CCO is not a low-level form of financial institutions in the modern financial markets, and it still has a strong competitive edge.⑥CCO is not for profit does not mean that it can not get the profit or no the ability of profitability.⑦CCO have a dual function of the economy and society, and it is an important way to solve economic democracy.⑧The business model like CCO has a strong resistance to the global economic crisis. The second is about the system structure of CCO. Through study the development of the CCO in the different countries, I think that①the CCO of grass-roots,②the CCO of regional,③the central credit unions,④industry self-regulatory associations,⑤deposit insurance fund,⑥lending insurance institutions (or the agencies and institutions with similar functions) consist of system structure of modern CCO. The third is about the law of development of CCO. There are:①Maintain voluntary, self-entitlement, self-help of the CCO of grass-roots is the essence and fundamental guarantee of the healthy development of whole system of CCO.②The development of CCO needs government's support, but its development course mainly shows the induced institutional change.③CCO has the character of union naturally.④CCO's development will inevitably occur mergers and acquisitions.⑤When CCO develop to an advanced stage, it is sure to lead mixed operation.⑥Based on the continuous development and the needs of risk management, the CCO formed the modern system structure.This paper's policy proposals are:restoring the original micro-shape of CCO is a key factor in the development of CRCCS; building a modern architecture of CCO is the strategic direction of CRCCs; creating a favorable macro-economic and legal environment is the external conditions of CRCCs.