Draft of the 2nd Five-year Development Plan of the ICCIC
(2010-2015）
Part One Review of the 1st Five-year Development Plan
During the cooperation in the implementation of Sino-Canada Cooperative Promotion and Development Project in 2001-2005, based on the project contents on strengthening ICCIC skills development, the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (ICCIC) and the Canadian Cooperative Association started to draft the ICCIC Development Plan Proposal (2002-2006) in 2001, and the Proposal was discussed and approved in the Plenary Meeting in 2005. It has been 5 years since the commencement of the Development Plan Proposal. During these 5 years, most of the development objectives and tasks set out in the Development Plan Proposal have been accomplished, but parts of them are yet to be achieved.
The objectives set for ICCIC by the Development Plan Proposal approved in 2005 are: through cooperative education and promotion, to help the promulgation of the Cooperative Law, increase people's initiative to follow the course of cooperatives, promote the development of cooperatives that meet ICA standards, allow workers to have their own economic organization through cooperatives and to strengthen their democratic awareness through participation in management, to make cooperatives an competitive vehicle achieving prosperity apart from private enterprises and other forms of enterprises, let cooperatives play their role in eliminating poverty, lessening the gap between the well-off and the impoverished, realize commonwealth and to contribute to the realization of social fairness and justice.
The action plan of ICCIC set by the Development Plan Proposal include following objectives: 1. To strengthen ICCIC's ability to promote the development of cooperatives; 2. To create successful cooperative models; 3. To strengthen publicity; 4. To enhance financial support foundation; 5. To create favorable legal and policy environment; 6. To expand members contact network; 7. To form an ICCIC action plan volunteers team.
Through the hard work of all ICCIC members in the last 5 years, most of the objectives and tasks set out in the above Development Plan Proposal have been accomplished.
1. Under the appeal and driving by ICCIC and other sectors with whom ICCIC closely worked with, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives was approved by the 24th Session of the Standing Committee of the 10th NPC on October 31, 2006 and was promulgated on July 1, 2007. In the last three years, Farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives in China have gained a dramatic development. Up to end of June, 2010, about 240 thousand cooperatives have been registered in the Industrial and Commercial Administration Bureau.
2. Since 2005, especially since the commencement of the Sino-Canada Cooperatives Reducing Poverty Project and our efforts in publicizing the Farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives Law, ICCIC have carried out a large number of cooperative training and publicity events (see the Five Year Work Report of ICCIC), and have developed many of model cooperatives. The introduction of the cooperative Development Ladder Assessment Tool (DLA) helped drive the publicity and popularization of ICA cooperative standards, helped a number of cooperatives raise their democratic participation awareness and improve internal management and business operation.
3. In the meantime, the abilities of ICCIC itself have been strengthened, its publicity work has been reinforced and its members team and contacts network have been expanded.
However, we must admit that, to date, parts of the objectives and tasks set by the Development Plan Proposal have not been achieved very well. The main issue was that the financial support foundation of ICCIC has not been effectively strengthened. Till now ICCIC have not established its own stable and reliable sources of funding, and little progress has been made in generating income by itself. These factors have seriously impacted and restricted the implementation of publicity, training and promotion work for cooperatives and the objectives to build a young team of cooperative workers, expand the ICCIC organization and to provide cooperatives with more supporting service.
Part Two Analysis on the Current Status of ICCIC
1. Strength of ICCIC
Strength of ICCIC can be generally summarized as the following aspects:
1) ICCIC has a glorious history in promoting the development of cooperatives in China. This history has made ICCIC a highly respected reputable NGO at home and abroad.
2) ICCIC has a large number of foreign members who are enthusiastic in promoting the development of cooperatives in China, and has established close partnership with some international friendly organizations. The support by foreign friends and international friendship organizations has empowered ICCIC in expanding external relations, gaining international support, learning from development experience of cooperatives in foreign countries and facilitating the communication between cooperative organizations at home and abroad.
3) ICCIC has a top cooperative experts team in China, and through this experts team, ICCIC has established good working relationship with the Central Government, functional departments in local governments, scientific research departments, universities and colleges.
4) For more than a decade, in the process of implementing cooperatives projects, women’s projects, ecological projects and rural finance projects, ICCIC has accumulated rich experience in project training, guidance, supervision and assessment, and has built a large number of project training materials.
5) Through project support, ICCIC has built good relationship with many frontline cooperatives and backbone cooperative cadres, and has developed some frontline cooperative tutors.
6) Through the project cooperation with Canadian Cooperative Association, ICCIC introduced the cooperative development ladder assessment tool (DLA) developed by CCA, and adapted it for local use. Through piloting in Beijing suburbs and further revision, this tool was made even more suitable for guiding internal democratic assessment and system improvement for cooperatives in China.
7) Established partnership with Shanghai Ximeng, Gansu Shandan Cooperatives Association, Shandan Peili School, Beijing Peili School and Cooperative Economy College of Qingdao Agricultural University, which was beneficial for carrying out cooperative training activities.
8) Built and improved the ICCIC web site, and made it an effective platform for publicity and contacts for ICCIC.
2. Weaknesses of ICCIC
However, ICCIC also has some significant weaknesses and disadvantages, which mainly include:
1) Since the termination of state fiscal support to ICCIC in 2000, cooperative projects purely supported by ICCIC basically ceased. This reduced the domestic influence of ICCIC.
2) For a certain period of time, the source of finance of ICCIC mainly relied on international project support, and all kinds of project activities of ICCIC also mainly depended on international project support. However, due to the impact of the global financial crisis, and owing to the improvement of China’s international economic status, foreign funding for all kinds of projects in China keeps decreasing. This caused dramatic decrease in the source of funding and number of international cooperation projects of ICCIC.
3) Till now, ICCIC have not established its own independent, stable and reliable sources of funding. This has seriously affected the implementation of ICCIC work.
4) Due to financial income restrictions, to date, there are only three members of staff in ICCIC. There is not enough human resource for independently carrying out project design, project fundraising, providing training for cooperatives on business management and marketing and mobilization of community activities. The ability of generating revenue on its own and fundraising is weak.
5) To date, ICCIC does not have its own training base. It is therefore difficult to independently carry out cooperative training activities.
3. Opportunities for ICCIC
1) The Law of the People’s Republic of China on Farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives was promulgated on July 1, 2007, which laid a solid foundation for the rapid development of farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives in China. Since 2007, farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives all around China have gained drastic development, and the demand for cooperative training has grown significantly.
2) At present, the development of farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives in China has entered into a new stage. In some places, the demand of farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives for business management, marketing, finance and accounting has increased dramatically.
3) With the development of frontline farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives, the need for forming cooperative alliance is increasing. The social demand for consumption cooperation, labor cooperation and credit cooperation outside farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives is also very strong. Such development trends require further innovation in the system and legislation in the further development of cooperatives in China.
4) In the recent two years, the No. 1 documents on rural policy of the Central Committee of CCP and documents of the China Banking Regulatory Commission have all proposed to actively develop rural cooperatives finance and to allow experiment in financing within cooperatives. Therefore, the development of cooperative finance has actually been put onto the agenda.
5) ICCIC has become a member of ICA this year. This has enabled ICCIC to expand international relations.
6) The above development trends have created favorable opportunities and conditions for ICCIC to work on its mission of promoting the development of cooperatives in China, expanding field of work and expanding external contacts.
4. Challenges and Threat for ICCIC
However, we must also realize that at present the development of ICCIC is under serious challenge and threat.
1) In some places, since the government support leading enterprises and talents in rural areas to run cooperatives, it is very common that cooperatives are controlled by enterprises and predominant households. This has caused huge difficulties for ICCIC to promote regularized cooperatives in line with international cooperatives principles.
2) In recent years, non-governmental organizations in China are developing in an extremely high speed. A large number of these NGOs start to pay attention to the field of cooperative development, and are attempting to start business in cooperative training and cooperative enterprise planning. They even participate in the competition in bidding for international and domestic cooperative project funds.
3) Some domestic and international organizations who have been operating small loan projects have now started to get involved in piloting cooperative finance.
4) Agricultural cadres training departments of governments at various levels, some local private training organizations, training departments of some leading enterprises and even some fake cooperative promotion organizations are starting to get involved in cooperative training and cooperative service.
5) Due to the public’s lack of knowledge and understanding in cooperatives, large amounts of social public welfare funds developed in recent years in China were directed to other public welfare projects, which caused negligence to and isolation of the public welfare characteristics of cooperative development projects.
The above factors have put ICCIC into an unfavorable position.
Part Three Development Plan for the Next Five Years
1. Basic Principles
The Articles of Association of ICCIC passed by the 3rd Plenary Session of ICCIC on June 19, 2005 provide that ICCIC is an international NGO formed by cooperative workers, experts, scholars and people of all walks of life at home and abroad, who care for the construction of socialist modernization in China and are enthusiastic in cooperative promotion. The tenet of ICCIC is to promote the founding and development of cooperatives in China and to make cooperatives an important backbone of Chinese economy and coordinated social development through persistent efforts.
The previous five year plan of ICCIC also specifically provided that the foundation of value of ICCIC was self-help, self-undertaking of responsibilities, democracy, equity, fairness and unity. ICCIC has inherited the tradition from its founder as well as the ethical belief of honesty, openness, social responsibilities and care for others. The historical mission of ICCIC is to maintain social and economic fairness and reduce the gap of wealth through promoting the development of cooperatives.
In its future development strategy, ICCIC will maintain the same organizational nature, adhere to its good tradition, value basis and ethical belief, and follow its consistent tenet, and will fulfill the historical mission of ICCIC with its persistent efforts.
2. Overall Vision
According to the fundamental principles in making developmental strategy plans of ICCIC, with consideration of the above analysis on the strength and weaknesses of ICCIC, we think that in the next 5 years, ICCIC should build itself into a top-class, influential and energetic organization for advocating and promoting cooperatives. Firstly, we will continue our great efforts in boosting the development and regularization construction of Farmers' Specialized Cooperatives that meet international cooperatives principles (see action plan 1); secondly, we will further expand cooperative development work into the fields of labor’s cooperatives, women’s cooperatives, consumer’s cooperatives, community cooperatives, Housing cooperatives, credit cooperatives, and cooperative finance, as well as the healthcare cooperatives, pensioner’s cooperatives and coop insurance (see action plan 2); thirdly, actively appeal and boost the revision and perfection of laws and regulations on cooperative through research and publicity, and promote the further improvement of legal environment for cooperatives (see action plan 3); fourthly, in order to fulfill the above mission to a better extent, we will endeavor to resolve the issue of financial support foundation of ICCIC itself (see action plan 4); fifthly, on the basis of improving financial status, we should recruit more talent, expand our staffing and improve our own abilities (see action plan 5); sixthly, we will try our best to build our own training base, train a number of model cooperatives, and organize a team of cooperative volunteers (see action plan 6); seventhly, gradually develop professional subsidiaries, expand business collaboration network and establish more extensive ties domestically and internationally (see action plan 7).
3. Action Plan
1) Boost the development and regularization construction of farmers' Specialized Cooperatives that meet international cooperatives principles.
In this year and next year, we should try to secure domestic and overseas project support, use the existing and localized cooperative development ladder assessment tool to greatly boost the regularization construction of Farmers' Specialized Cooperatives in China, and try to foster a few exemplary models.
2) Expand the cooperative development promotion work into more fields outside Farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives.
In the next two or three years, we should gradually switch the working field of ICCIC from the current focus on promoting the development of Farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives to other multi-field cooperative development. In particular, we should expand the promotion work in labor’s cooperatives, women’s cooperatives, consumer’s cooperatives, community cooperatives, Housing cooperatives, credit cooperatives, and cooperative finance, as well as the healthcare cooperatives, pensioner’s cooperatives and coop insurance, etc., and should promote and introduce in China the concerned cooperative’s experience from overseas.
3) Strength research and publicity actively appeal and boost the revision and perfection of laws and regulations concerning cooperatives.
We should try to find all kinds of project funds, subsidize survey and research on improving legal environment for cooperatives, publicize and appeal for the revision and perfection of cooperative law, especially we should appeal for the creation of common cooperatives law.
4) Endeavor to resolve ICCIC’s own issue of financial support foundation.
In the next two years, we should endeavor to resolve ICCIC’s own issue of financial support foundation. We need to call for more ideas and expand our source of funding from more perspectives, including applying for domestic and overseas project support, sponsorship by domestic and overseas enterprises, public donation in China and from overseas, ICCIC-sponsored donation and revenue generation, etc.
5) Recruit talent, expand staffing and improve ICCIC’s abilities.
In order to complete the above tasks, we need to recruit professional talent and reinforce the backbone business team of ICCIC. In the first instance, we need to authorize the Secretariat to recruit 1-2 profession(s) to specialize in fundraising and project planning so as to resolve ICCIC’s difficulty of fund shortage.
On the basis of improving financial status, we should gradually expand our staffing and should try to gradually establish internal professional division such as foundation division, project division, training division and social publicity in the next 3-5 years in order to strengthen ICCIC’s ability in organization and mobilization.
6) Establish training bases, foster exemplary models and organize volunteer teams.
If the issue of financial support foundation can be resolved, it is necessary that ICCIC builds its own training bases to enable more frequent and regular training activities. On this basis, we should gradually foster a few exemplary cooperative models as a platform to promote the image of ICCIC. In the meantime, we need to form a cooperative volunteer team of university students and frontline cooperative backbone members so as to expand social drive’s participation into cooperative promotion work.
7) Gradually develop subsidiaries, expand collaboration network and establish more extensive domestic and overseas links.
Building on the existing collaboration network formed by Shanghai Shareholding Cooperatives Association, Shandan Gungho Cooperatives Association, Qingdao Gungho Training Centre, Shandan Peili School, Beijing Peili School, etc., we should gradually establish a number of subsidiaries such as remote professional committees in order to expand the scope of collaboration and cooperation, and should establish more extensive international links through international friendly organizations such as International Cooperatives Alliance (ICA), International Organization of Industrial, Artisanal and Service Producers’ Co-operatives (CICOPA), Canada Cooperatives Association (CCA), Fair-trade Labeling Organization (FLO) and New Zealand China Friendship Society (NZCFS).
June 29, 2010
Beijing
