Abstract: Since the 21 century, whether Chinese farmers are“good at division”or“good at cooperation”has been under constant debate. Based on the sample data of 223 prefecture-level cities in China from 2014 to 2020, this paper investigates the effect of Confucian culture on farmers’ cooperation and its mechanism by taking farmers’ cooperatives as the research object. The findings show that, first, Confucian culture can promote farmers’ cooperation, which is not only a strong rebuttal to the negative view that Chinese farmers are“good at dividing but not good at cooperating”but also the cultural confidence and path confidence in the development of Chinese cooperatives. Second, the formal system plays a suppressive role in the promotion of farmers’ cooperation by Confucian culture, and the better the formal system, the weaker the promotion effect of Confucian culture on farmers’ cooperation. Third, Confucian culture will play a greater role in promoting farmers’ cooperation in the lower open areas and the western regions, and the promoting effect of Confucian culture on farmers’ cooperation has become more obvious since the adjustment of the tendency of cooperative policy intervention in 2019. Fourth, Confucian culture can indirectly influence farmers’ cooperation by increasing the level of educational public facilities and social capital. Therefore, we should attach importance to the nourishing effect of traditional culture on modern cooperative culture, promote the organic integration of Confucian culture and cooperative culture, adhere to expanding opening up to the outside world, strengthen the construction of educational public facilities, expand the network of farmer relationships, and accelerate the process of farmer organization and cooperation.

Key words: Confucian culture, farmer cooperation, good at division, not good at cooperation, formal system