1. Background and main content of policy The fifth plenary sessions of the 18th CPC Central Committee approved the CPC Committee's Recommendations on the 13th Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development, which suggested and interpreted the idea of innovative, coordinated, green, open and inclusive development, and demanded that various forms of moderate-scale agricultural development should play a leading role in modern agricultural development in order to construct and cultivate policy systems for new-type agricultural business entities. The No.1 document in 2015 pointed out the guidance on the expansion of service areas for farmers' specialized cooperatives and the goal to further deepen exemplar cooperatives constructions through promoting standardized development and public informing system for annual reports. In accordance with the requirements from the central government, local governments continued to take farmers' cooperatives as the main method for constructing new forms of agricultural business system and promoting modern agriculture. Local governments implemented the legal requirements, increased the support, strengthened the guidance, and provide advantages for enhancing standardized development of farmers' cooperatives.
1) Started supervision and examination to promote the standardized development of farmers，cooperatives. To practically implement the Opinions on Guiding and Promoting the Standardized Development of Farmers Cooperatives issued by the ministry-level, national farmers' cooperatives development conference joint conference, and in accordance with the requirements raised by the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms, MoA started examinations on the implementation of the Opinions, guided and supervised the implementation intensively, and constructed a report on the implementation of farmers' cooperatives reform. The State Administration of Industry and Commerce organized specialized supervision task force to publicly inform and supervise farmers' cooperatives' annual reports to inform related movements and enhance the implementation of supervising systems. Some 19 provinces introduced local laws and regulations related to farmers' cooperatives, and 15 provinces enacted guiding opinions on standardized development, and provided regulatory support for the standardized development for farmers' cooperatives.
2) Deeply launched the construction of exemplar cooperatives and set examples for farmers，cooperatives development. In 2015，the ministry-level, national farmers' cooperatives development joint conference organized the first check on national example farmers，cooperatives. MoA published Notice on Monitoring Exemplar Farmers' Specialized Cooperatives, and reemphasized the standards and clarified the procedures. On top of local checking and reporting and joint conference office review, and after the approval from the joint conference, Notice of MoA on Publishing the List of Qualified National Exemplar Farmers* Cooperatives after First Check was published. Some 3 292 checked and qualified cooperatives were named as national exemplar farmers' cooperatives. Local governments also started constructing various forms of exemplar cooperatives and exemplar counties.
3) Carried out cooperative credit cooperation pilot program prudently, and improved the service capability of cooperatives. Upon approval from the State Council, in 2015, Shandong Province started cooperative credit cooperation pilot programs. The China Banking Regulatory Commission started special investigations and summarized the lessons learnt from the pilot programs. After thorough investigation on the necessity, feasibility and risk prevention of cooperative credit cooperation, the commission worked with MoA and other ministries and improved the basic standards and conditions of cooperative credit cooperation pilot programs.
4) Improved supportive policies, and strengthened the cooperatives. The MoA increased financial, tax, financial credit support, and fostered policy-level support for cooperatives. To improve the moderate-scale development of new forms of business entities, such as farmers' cooperatives, the Ministry of Finance issued many guiding opinions on supporting various forms of moderate-scale managements, on advancing the transition of agricultural development, on developing comprehensive agricultural to enhance moderate-scale management. Upon approval from the State Council, the Ministry of Finance arranged 20 percent of the general subsidies for purchasing agricultural supplies, subsidies for major pilot growers and "three subsidies" and used them to support the establishment of a comprehensive rural credit guarantee system. In 2015, the Ministry of Finance arranged some budget from the modern agricultural development fund to support farmers，cooperatives. Continued the pilot program for farmers，cooperatives, and encouraged local governments to explore and promote the cooperation with financial and social capital, to establish public platforms, and to continue governments' service purchasing. These efforts formed the new development mechanism of finance-supported farmers' cooperatives. MoA also benefited from the financial fund and conducted pilot programs for credit guarantee subsidy, effectively used finance capital to support cooperatives. The State Administration of Taxation published Notice on Implementing the "Three in One" Registration System Reform, and specified that since Oct. 1, 2015, newly-formed farmers' cooperatives do not need to register for taxation again after receiving business licenses with uploaded unified social credit code of legal persons reviewed and issued by the administrative departments of industry and commerce. The General Office of the China Banking Regulatory Commission issued Notice on Effectively Providing Rural Financial Services in 2015, and required banking industry and finance institutions to keep providing financial services to help with new agricultural business entities and to keep offering great support for modern agricultural development. As of the end of September in 2015，banking industry and financial instructions' granted loans to various organizations, including farmers' cooperatives, increased by 14.3 percent when compared to that of 2014.
5) Supported cooperatives to start agricultural related projects, and improved the development conditions for cooperatives. The National Development and Reform Commission played a leading role in industry construction and development planning, and encouraged cooperatives to produce commodity agricultural products, and to undertake high-standard farmland construction, standardized scale farming and other projects. Led social capital to participate in agriculture, farmer and rural area related projects, and arranged special construction fund to support cooperatives to initiate rural industry integration development projects. The Ministry of Finance published guiding opinions on agricultural comprehensive development and increasing support for characteristic industries, enhancing agricultural industrialization, and organized and carried out agricultural comprehensive development high-standard farmland pilot projects and innovative investment and financing enhanced high-standard farmland construction pilot programs for new business entities to apply and implement. The Ministry of Water Resources worked with the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance and the MoA, among others, and accomplished agricultural water price comprehensive reform pilot program; enhanced agricultural irrigation facilities，property right reform and innovative management and operation pilot program, encouraged the cooperatives to carry out project construction and management; including complete farmers5 cooperatives on water facility as one of the considerations in small agricultural irrigation facility project implementation and management.
6) Led and stimulated cooperatives' innovative and development vitality. In September 2015, MoA held a meeting on innovative development of national farmers' cooperatives in Heilongjiang Province to exchange and communicate innovative methods that are beneficial for farmers' cooperatives' joint-stock cooperation, moderate-scale operation and farmers benefit enhancement, improve farmers，cooperatives, regulated innovation, and promote open and diversified, convergent and sharing cooperatives. The State Administration for Industry and Commerce implemented the subscription registration system for registered capital, loosened the registration requirements for the business sites, promoted "Business License First and Regulatory License Later" and "One License One Code" reform, facilitated cooperative registration, and utilized credit information notification platform to collect basic registration information.
7) Enhanced training and provided a good environment for cooperatives' development. MoA arranged and launched training sessions and tutorials for counselors and leaders of cooperatives in counties and villages, compiled specialized training plans, and actively encouraged and led local agricultural departments and social forces to train cooperatives' talents. Preliminary statistics showed that an accumulated 287,000 people have been trained across all levels of agricultural departments.
2. Policy implementation and evaluation Farmers' cooperatives saw continuous, healthy development in 2015. Until the end of 2015, there were 1.531 million registered farmers' cooperatives nationally, up by 18.8 percent from that of 2014; total amount of capital contribution was 3.4 trillion yuan, 25.4 percent higher than that of 2014; A 6.5 percent increase was seen in registered farmers: 100.9 million farmers were registered with the cooperatives, which took up 42 percent of farmers in China. Farmers' cooperatives were specialized in different areas and different industries, and they implemented various vivid, rich innovations.
1) Organizational and structural innovations. Rural land joint-stock cooperatives where contracted land management rights were shares and community share-holding cooperatives where collective property rights were quantified as shares have been flourishing. In some areas, cooperatives were formed based on surplus labor after land circulation. Farmers' houses, factory buildings were invested, which created enriching-people cooperatives that realized human cooperation, production cooperation, land, property and technical cooperation. At the same time, to cope with heated market competition, cooperatives started higher level, expanded cooperation and associations in more areas. Currently there are more than 7,200 cooperative associations.
2) Industrial forms innovation. Cooperatives actively adopted new theories and new technologies, and realized various forms of operations such as plant farming-animal-farming recycle agriculture, production, processing and marketing integrated agriculture, folk cultural products, recreation and tourism and countryside tourism and so on. Rural credit cooperation, electronic commerce, membership marketing, subscribed purchasing and other new types of industrial formats brought both technological and financial benefits.
3) Innovated operation mechanism. Cooperatives have become an integrated form of business entities that combine new business entities and traditional farmers and integrate production and service together. A working mechanism featured with multiple parties' participation, various ways of interest distribution and flexible management and decision-making has gradually formed.
4) Innovated supportive mechanism. In some areas, the old way of providing financial supports for projects was gradually replaced by providing supportive platforms. The leading role and the multiplier effect of supportive policy were emphasized. In some areas subsidies to help the poor were invested as farmers' shares in cooperatives. These efforts helped people to shake off poverty positively, and brought beneficial impacts, and helped realizing inclusive development.
