Supply and marketing cooperatives took shape in the early years of the People’s Republic of China, becoming a main channel through which the state supplied farmers with agricultural inputs and daily necessities, bought produce and moved goods between villages and cities.
By the early 1950s, tens of thousands of grassroots cooperatives were already operating across the country.
Their dominance faded after market reforms from the late 1970s, as private shops, wholesalers, supermarkets and later e-commerce transformed rural commerce. But the network itself has endured.
Today, the system has about 37,000 grassroots cooperatives and more than 856,000 operating and service outlets nationwide, according to the All-China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, which heads the network.
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