Rural credit cooperative

At this time, they were not commercial enterprises similar to banks, but rather channeled credit between the state and the people's communes in rural areas.

[1] In the late 1970s, after economic reforms enabled some individual entrepreneurialism and the creation of collective enterprises, the RCCs began to function as grassroots banks that provided credit and savings accounts to families and collective enterprises.

In the reform era, the RCCs were intended to serve as a means for the Agricultural Bank of China to funnel credit into rural areas.

This left the RCCs as the only legal financial institution (other than banks) that served rural enterprises and individuals.

The first foreign investment in an RCB was allowed in 2006, when Rabobank and the International Finance Corporation (the private sector arm of the World Bank) acquired stakes in the United Rural Cooperative Bank of Hangzhou.