农村合作运动与中国现代农业金融的困窘——以华洋义赈会为中心的研究

Rural Cooperatives and Dilemma of Modern Agricultural Finance in China——The Case of China International Famine Relief Commission

20世纪20至30年代华洋义赈会农村合作运动的实质,是通过合作社把农民集结为信用团体单位,减少借贷的交易费用,从而把现代银行和国家金融机构吸引到农村的金融活动中来,形成以金融为切入点改良农民经济的模式。这场运动对农村经济起到了有益的作用。但由于借贷的条件所限,义赈会的资金主要为条件相对优越的农民所利用,导致了合作贷款的中农化。当合作社模式被国家政权推广为主要的农业政策时,现代农业金融制度产生了根本的困窘:国家有责任却没有能力向全部农民放贷,无法避免贷款的广义中农化,导致了合作运动最终在中国消失。

In the 1920s-30s, a rural cooperative movement, sponsored by China International Famine Relief Commission, inspired the Chinese peasants into credit units. Owing to reduction of transaction costs in agricultural loans through collective dealing, the credit cooperatives attracted the capital of modern banks and state financial institutions, and thus formed an approach to the problems of Chinese peasant economy by increasing the financial capacity of fanners. However, as a consequence of borrowing conditions, the Commission was only able to make its loans to the middle peasants , or the relative better-off fanners. When the modern Chinese state adopted the cooperative model , its agricultural finance faced a profound dilemma. The state was responsible for economic improvement of the entire peasantry, but its agricultural loan programs were only able to benefit the middle peasants. As the poor were left out of modern agricultural finance, the movement of rural cooperative could hardly resolve the peasant problems and went extinct by the mid of the twentieth century.