History of the cooperative movement in China
The history of the Cooperative Movement in China began a quarter of the way into the 20th century, when Chinese modernizers and sympathetic foreigners promoted cooperatives as a tool for reforming the Chinese economy. This accelerated during the Guomindang's peak control of the country in the 1930s, when cooperatives were a significant plank of the Guomindang's development policy.
Source: Wikipedia — History of the cooperative movement in China (CC BY-SA 4.0)