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TERRA ECONOMICUS

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  • Cooperation without cooperatives? A functional theory of embedded solidarity in non-capitalist China

Cooperation without cooperatives? A functional theory of embedded solidarity in non-capitalist China


TERRA ECONOMICUS, Vol. 23, No 3,

Citation: Yeqiang X., Lozhnikova A.V., Khloptsov D.M. (2025). Cooperation without cooperatives? A functional theory of embedded solidarity in non-capitalist China. Terra Economicus 23(3), 34–49 (in Russian). DOI: 10.18522/2073-6606-2025-23-3-34-49

Acknowledgment: The study was supported by the Development Program of Tomsk State University (Priority 2030).

The United Nations (UN) has designated 2025 as the International Year of Cooperatives. Against the backdrop of growing disillusionment with shareholder capitalism and widening global inequality, cooperatives have re-emerged as a promising institutional alternative to private and state ownership, grounded in the principle of “one worker = one vote.” Building on a fundamental economic approach to cooperatives – as a durable rather than transitional element of a non-capitalist economy – articulated by D. I. Mendeleev, A. V. Chayanov, and A. P. Bychkov, we propose an analytical model for assessing the intensity of cooperation along four key economic dimensions: asset ownership, participation in governance, surplus distribution, and collective risk-bearing. In Bychkov’s spirit, the model moves beyond the International Co-operative Alliance’s (ICA) formal-legal criteria for cooperative recognition and advances the idea that expanding cooperative ownership should be a priority of state policy in contexts of historical collectivism. Based on an analysis of five PRC companies, we show that real cooperation is determined primarily by property relations across the entire cycle of reproduction. The cases include Huawei – the world’s largest high-tech non-public firm with an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP); the agricultural machinery producer YTO Group; the digitized rural cooperative Lu Wei; and the publicly listed platform companies Tencent and Xiaomi. The Russian co-authors also draw public attention to the fact that cooperatives embody the economic substance of collective – rather than private – ownership, contrary to their classification as “private” in the current All-Russian Classifier of Forms of Ownership. The article contributes to the global debate on China’s economic model: capitalism with Chinese characteristics or socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Keywords: theory of non-capitalist development; collective ownership; alternative employee ownership; economic relations of ownership; distribution; reproduction
JEL codes: J54


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Publisher: Southern Federal University
ISSN: 2073-6606