The Specialized Farmers' Co-operative Law in China was enacted in 2007, which brought a rapid increase in the number of Farmers' co-operatives across China. However, it is doubtful that the actual conditions of the co-operatives have the essence of being co-operative. Though dozens of studies have classifed the co-operatives on the basis of who organized them, this methodology of classification is insufficient to truly reveal the factual situation of the cooperatives. Therefore, in this paper we sort the cooperatives from the viewpoint of business entity type, based on the investigation conducted in an agricultural-industrialized coastland area of Jiangsu Province, China. Excluding the famers' co-operatives that are true cooperative associations, and co-operatives for which the possibility of developing similar to Japanese cooperatives is possible, many of the remaing co-operatives have a strong private enterprise character, which impedes their development as a true cooperative association.
