Main Results of Cooperative Democratic Assessment Experiment
in Beijing
Beijing Rural Cooperative Economy Operation Administration Station cooperated with ICCIC to carry out a democratic assessment experiment for the farmers’ cooperative standardized construction in Beijing suburbs and have achieve preliminary results. The scope of experiment and demonstration will be further expanded this year.
Farmers’ cooperative standardized construction is an important task commonly encountered by the development of farmers’ cooperatives in China.
Since the Farmers' Special Cooperatives Law of the People’s Republic of China was promulgated on July 1, 2007, the development of farmers’ cooperatives has entered a new stage of dramatically-increased number and under-developed quality. According to the statistics of the State Administration Bureau for Industry and Commerce, by the end of 2009 there were 246,400 farmers’ cooperatives in China with 21 million member households. The number of cooperatives and member households had increased by one fold over the previous year. Of the total, the number of farmers’ cooperatives in Beijing was 3406, covering 427,000 farming households, increasing by 42% and 11% respectively over the previous year. At present, the development of farmers’ cooperatives in Beijing suburbs has covered areas of agriculture, livestock, agricultural products marketing and processing, countryside tourism sectors. This has become an important form of driving the increase of farmers’ income.
However, the dramatic increase in the number of cooperatives has exposed some problems in cooperative standardized construction in China. Judging from a national scope, these problems include: some cooperatives do not have definitive operation tenets, system operation is not standardized, internal governance is not democratic, business operation is not active, service function is week, income distribution is not rational and financial accounts are not transparent, etc. These have affected the internal cohesion and development sustainability of farmer’s cooperatives.
According to the above issues, Beijing Rural Cooperative Economy Operation Administration Station cooperated with ICCIC to take the lead in carrying out farmer’s cooperatives democratic assessment experiment and demonstration in 20 cooperatives in two district and county in Beijing suburbs. Specifically-speaking, they made use of the Cooperative Development Ladder Assessment Tool introduced from Canada by ICCIC, modified it and redesigned it, and organized cadres and members of relevant cooperatives to carry out democratic assessment on the internal management and standardized construction of cooperatives, identified room for development and took measures to improve.
Cooperative Development Ladder Assessment Tool introduced from Canada by ICCIC was a tool that was developed and designed by the Canadian Cooperative Association and that involved mobilizing cooperative cadres and members to jointly participate in a questionnaire exercise to carry out democratic assessment on five aspects including cooperative system construction, internal governance, business operation, financial management and vision planning. The purpose of this tool was to identify and analyze problems existing in cooperatives through democratic participative internal assessment on cooperatives and to work together to draft improvement plans and realize the self-perfection of cooperatives.
This tool was experimented and applied by ICCIC in three cooperatives in the provinces of Gansu, Sichuan and Shaanxi, and won the favorable comments by local cadres and cooperative members who thought that this tool was rationally-designed, had regularized methods and presented objective assessment results which made it a good benchmark to evaluate the development level of cooperatives.
Nevertheless, the trial use of the original version of the Cooperative Development Ladder Assessment Tool has exposed some shortcomings, which mainly include: 1. The original assessment tool only uses internationally-practiced cooperative principles as benchmark. This is not consistent with the standards in the Farmers' Special Cooperatives Law of the People’s Republic of China. 2. The contents designing of assessment criteria is based on the basic framework of the standards of cooperatives at advanced development level in foreign countries. It is considerably distant from the fact that most cooperatives in China are still in the elementary development stage. Some assessment contents are not able to aim at the assessment purposes. 3. The contents of the original assessment tool are too detailed, the questions are too cumbersome and the questionnaire is too long, which makes the assessment process time-and-energy-consuming and difficult to popularize. 4. The survey objects in the original assessment tool are not clear. The two-level rating method is somewhat objective and arbitrary. The marking methods are not consistent with the practical customs in China.
According to the above issues, in the cooperative assessment experiment carried out in Beijing suburbs in conjunction with ICCIC, Beijing Rural Cooperative Economy Operation Administration Station considerably modified and redesigned the original Cooperative Development Ladder Assessment Tool.
The modified Cooperative Development Ladder Assessment Tool has the following features: Firstly, The original one-set questionnaire has been divided into Questionnaire A and Questionnaire B according to different assessment purposes and survey objects. Questionnaire A was based on the needs of the government and external bodies for assessing cooperatives, and took key leaders, finance staff members and accountants of cooperatives as questionnaire survey objects. It mainly assessed the overall development status of cooperatives. Questionnaire B was based on the need of self-reflection and self-improvement within cooperatives. It took ordinary cooperative members as backbone participants of assessment, and mainly assessed the internal governance and the management regularization level in cooperatives. Secondly, on the foundation of using internationally-practiced cooperative principles as assessment benchmark, more standards in the Farmers' Special Cooperatives Law of the People’s Republic of China have been used fundamental criteria. Thirdly, in the designing and selection of indicator contents, the actual status of cooperatives development in China are fully considered, and the contents not involved or rarely involved in farmers’ cooperatives in China have been removed. Fourthly, the length of the questionnaire was considerably reduced and the number of questions is cut to control the assessment time to be within 30-60 minutes. Fifthly, the arbitrariness of marking is reduced. According to the marking practice in China, a hundred-mark system is used, which makes the marking more intuitive and distinct.
Compared with some other assessment plans used in China, this set of cooperatives democratic assessment tool has overcome the defects in other assessment plans such as narrowly emphasizing achievement indexes and economic indexes as well as the defects of neglecting the importance of regularization construction. It has changed the historical means of downward and inward assessment, and emphasizes mobilizing the subjective initiative of cooperative cadres and members. Through upward assessment, it realizes self-monitoring and self-perfection of cooperatives. It has overcome the complicated issues such as rough index design and over subjective and arbitrary marking methods in the assessment plans of some local governments in China, and the issues where assessment methods designed by academic institutions are too professional and the data analysis is too complicated. The modified questionnaire has considered the objectives of having comprehensive and systematic assessment indexes, and objective and easy assessment methods.
The modified questionnaires were tested in two rounds of democratic assessment in 20 cooperatives in two district and county in Beijing suburbs. Four cooperatives scored over 90, accounting for 20% of the total number of cooperatives; three scored 80-90, accounting for 15%; nine scored 70-80, accounting for 45%; and 4 scored 60-70, accounting for 20%. Through the items for which scores were deducted, we could clearly see the room for improvement in regularization construction of each cooperative, and therefore carry out further training and draft rectification measures accordingly. Cadres, members and experts participating in the experiment thought that the above assessment results basically matched the actual development status of local cooperatives, which proved that the designing of the set of assessment tool was quite rational, reliable and extensively applicable.
In August 2009, 11 Central Government ministries and commissions including the Ministry of Agriculture of the People’s Republic of China issued the Recommendations on Carrying out Demonstration Cooperatives Building among Farmers’ Special Cooperatives, which recommended building of demonstration cooperatives among farmers’ special cooperative all around the country. Among the three important contents in building demonstration cooperatives, the top priority was to strengthen regularization construction and to improve democratic management level of farmers’ professional cooperatives.
According to the above guidance, Beijing Rural Cooperative Economy Operation Administration Station and ICCIC have reached the intent of second phase cooperation, and have decided to further expand the scope in 2010 to select 80-100 cooperatives in 4-6 districts and counties in Beijing suburbs to carry out experimental demonstration of cooperative regularization construction democratic assessment.
