The study of Chinese economic and social problems requires that certain fundamental Chinese conditions be kept constantly in mind by the Western student, lest he attempt to analyze from the contemporary economic and social viewpoints of his own country. Accomplishments and plans must both be considered in relation to what has gone before and what is within the realm of possibility under given conditions, rather than by comparison with accomplishments and plans in other countries where the basic situation is entirely different. The object of this paper is to place cooperatives in relation to the to the reconstruction as a whole, and to estimate the extent to which cooperatives are an effective instrument of economic reconstruction. As the Kuomintang or Nationalist Party has been the governing power in China since 1928, this study of necessity a description of cooperatives as a phase of reconstruction under the Kuomintang.