CO-OPS HELPING CHINA REBUILD ECONOMIC LIFE
Barnett, Robert W.
Co-ops Helping China Rebuild Economic Life Are Having a Profound Effect, Writer Declares By ROBERT W. BARNETT Institute of Pacific Relations THERE have been two main aspects to the economic...
...Some heavy and large scale industrial enterprises have been established...
...Yet the movement should properly be viewed as one whose success rests with the energy and integrity of common people rather than with the decisions of a few political or economic authorities...
...Cooperatives produce daily necessities in order to deprive Japan of (he fruits of the China market...
...Free China has been divided into five regions and subdivided into 55 depots in which over 500 men and women engineers, accountants, and organizers are at work...
...and in the remote and relatively inaccessible west and southwest has begun to create a new industrial basis for continued resistance...
...Local populations have been suspicious and reticent to accept a new idea...
...Co-ops Helping China Rebuild Economic Life Are Having a Profound Effect, Writer Declares By ROBERT W. BARNETT Institute of Pacific Relations THERE have been two main aspects to the economic strategy of the Sino-Japanese war...
...COOPS BEGUN To escape the vulnerability of factory concentrations and to disperse industrial capacity to regions where raw materials and demand already existed, the Chinese Industrial Cooperative movement was conceived...
...The movement has faced marv obstacles...
...The Chinese Industrial Cooperative movement has already shown impressive results...
...Moreover, their byproducts, strengthened morals through self-help, and Increased self-confidence through experimentation in new modes | of production and organization, have I already made a permanent contribu-| tion to China's future...
...But it is unlikely that the cooperatives will become the backbone of Chinese economic life, either tn war or peace time...
...Textile cooperatives producing goods for civilian and miltary consumpton have been preponderant...
...Raw materials frequently have been lacking...
...They could not suffice to meet the needs of beleaguered China...
...The Chinese Industrial Cooperatives have the support of the Chinese government...
...t» make beats, to produce cigarets, to make land mines and hand grenades, to make radio equipment, to produce thcrmcs bottles, and so on...
...In less than a year and a half more than 1300 cooperative units have been established, comprising 25,000 members...
...Such enterprises are, of necessity, concentrated and immobile and therefore liable to Japanese air attack...
...It has lacked trained personnel...
...Cooperatives produce military essentials in order to arm the soldier...
...The Chinese Industrial Cooperative plays the role of the guerrilla in the economic sphere...
...None of these difficulties, however, has seriously blocked expansion of this pioneer movement...
...However, others have been formed to manufacture machines, to mine coal and iron, to wash gold, to print school books and other literature, to produce alcohol, to make shoes, to refine sugar...
...They can become, however, an increasingly important contributor to China's needs...
...On one hand, Japan has progressively cut China off from the outside world by blockading China's coastal ports, closing the Yangtze and Pearl rivers, severing China's highway and threatening the rail connections with Indo-China...
...STRENGTHENS MORALE Cooperatives absorb the wounded, the refugee, and the unemployed and thereby strengthen civilian morale...
...Blessed with a nucleus of imaginative and enterprising leaders, both Chinese and foreign, the movement has made rapid progress...
...On the other hand, China has hastened extension of her communications through the southeast to Indo-China, the southwest to Burma, and the ncrthwest to the Soviet Union...
...Moreover, through education in cooperative organization and the introduction of improved techniques, the movement has facilitated China's transtion from a primitive agricultural and handicraft economy to one employing more advanced scientflc means of production...
...Productive equipment has been insufficient...
Vol. 10 • March 1940 • No. 12
