A Chinese organizational form of a production unit located in a rural area and usually collectively owned by the local community, although in practice under the control of the local community government. Before the Chinese Economic Reform the role of TVEs was restricted to the provision of industrial inputs into collective agricultural production, and they had no access to the market. The reform allowed the TVEs to sell some of their produce in local markets and to experiment with organization of their production organization. Flexibility and adaptation to market needs led to the rapid growth of the TVEs until the mid-1990s; eventually, a large proportion of TVEs were restructured and privatized.