Research On Gansu Rural Cooperative Movement(1935—1949)

The rural cooperative movement in Gansu originates from the rural movement of collectivization implemented by the national government,and it is also a part of the national government’s plan of developing the northwest region.However,the rural cooperative movement in Gansu at the beginning belongs to a local and spontaneous,lacking unified management and coordination.The movement was finally uniformly managed by the Farmers Bank of China in 1935 when the branch of the bank was set up in Lanzhou.However,due to the scarce capital and talents,the rural cooperative movement in Gansu remained a state of the rudiment before the war of resistance,without significant achievement.After the outbreak of the Comprehensive Anti-Japanese War,the national government moved westward to realize durable resistance,and Gansu became the central region of the hinterland of northwest China,undertaking a series of burdensome businesses of economical production.In order to improve the productive capacity of Gansu’s agricultural economy,Gansu,with the support of the national government,started to make great efforts to build the banking network including new-type banks,cooperatives and cooperative vault,and to construct more professional facilities of administrative management at the level of counties,which made the cause of Gansu’s rural cooperative develop quickly,with a trend of surpassing other formers.During this period,cooperatives expanded their scope of businesses to the scale covering almost the whole province,and even containing the region with ethnic minorities living in it.The category of loans also became diversified.Loans of farmland irrigation and water conservancy,agricultural reforming,rural sideline activity,livestock husbandry,etc.greatly enriched the way of circulation of Gansu’s rural finance.In general,on one hand,the cooperative movement helped Gansu’s rural economy get through the hard time,and enabled it to show a rising state during the period of the war of resistance.Although the rural cooperative movement in Gansu entered the period of recession after the war of resistance,it still optimized the financial status that troubled Gansu’s villages for a long term,suppressed rampant usuries,improve farmers’ enthusiasm of engaging in production,and enhanced farmers’ affection of the country.On the other hand,the cooperative movement in Gansu still has many problems.During the movement for over ten years,problems such as the weak power of guidance for cooperation,deficient capital of cooperation,extremely poor quality of cooperatives were not solved.The cooperative movement merely solved the superficial problem of the rural economy,while it avoided discussing about the issue of land allocation at a deeper level.To trace to its cause,it can be found that the rural cooperative movement in Gansu is just a reformative movement of agriculture.