From our archives

Once discouraged, cooperatives to grow

Some 58,000 Chinese collectively owned businesses contributed to 17.5 percent of China's annual industrial output and 51.33 percent of its light industrial output in 1980. Also called "cooperatives", these firms also earned US$3.16 billion, nearly 71.6 percent of the total amount earned by the country's light industry. They provided jobs for more than 400,000 people in the same year.

However, their number is still small as they went through ups and downs between the late 1950s and 1970s. In 1958, more than 100,000 handicraft producers' cooperatives were closed.