The productivity and political radicalism of the Chinese cooperative movement

The productivity and political incentive of the Chinese cooperative movement are still in controversy. Theoretically, the cooperative brings both scale effect and monitoring cost, and the free exit rights reduce the monitoring cost and raise the net revenue, but the radicalism lowers the effort input and the net benefit for insufficient labor incentives. Meanwhile, the provincial leaders with lower Party ranks will behave more radically in cooperative movement for promotion incentives. Using the provincial participation rate of all kinds of cooperatives from 1950 to 1956, we find that the temporary mutual aid groups perform the same as household farming; the regular mutual aid groups, elementary cooperatives, and advanced cooperatives experience increasing output loss. The Party secretaries of alternate members and non-members behave more radically in cooperative movement and thus are more likely to be promoted than the Party secretaries of full members. We confirm that the cooperatives had already triggered a productivity decline before Great Lead Forward that was controversial between Lin(1990) and Kung (1993), and we also clarify the disputes on the political radicalism in authoritarian China between Kung and Chen(2011) and Yang et al.(2014). • This paper examines the productivity and political radicalism of Chinese cooperative movement in 1950s. • Except for the temporary group, the regular group, elementary and advanced cooperative cause increasing output loss. • The Party alternate members and non-members behave more radically and are more likely to be promoted than the full members. • We clarify the controversy on the cooperatives' efficiency and the political radicalism in authoritarian China.