According to SMU Associate Professor of Sociology Forrest Zhang, one possible reason for China reviving primary supply and marketing cooperatives (SMCs) was that traditional farmers’ cooperatives set up to pool resources for the benefit of all had not worked out very well. He added that SMCs are state-run marketing organisations that originated in the Mao [Zedong] era, while the farmers’ co-ops are a more recent development which did not play the role in uniting producers and strengthening their positions in the market.