Abstract:

The rural cooperative movement, first arising in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, was a socio - economic measure taken forcibly by the Nanjing government so as to reorganize rural society in the process of establishing a modern nation - state. With the development of such a movement from top to bottom, however, cooperative societies gradually came to be controlled by rural political powers and finally became landowners' and despotic gentry's tools of seeking profits. The causes for this not only lay in a close relation of the cooperative movement to the transformation of local political institutions, but also in an excessive dependence on the state administrative power (for example, its enforcement of the neighborhood administrative system). In the end the cooperative movement was not successful and drifted off the government's purpose of "saving the rural area" and "relieving peasantry". It exemplifies that the rural autonomy and the cultivation of ability in self - organization can only depend on farmers and their communities themselves instead of the government administrative power.

Key words: rural society, cooperative society, reorganization