Hebei NPC delegates blaze rural success path
By Wang Zhuoqiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-03-04 07:37

China has never seen such farmers.

The ancient emperors couldn't have imagined them talking about politics with such confidence.

Chairman Mao Zedong couldn't have imagined them running multimillion-yuan companies with such skills.

Deng Xiaoping couldn't have imagined them balancing private plots and collective finance with such a new-age vision.

They are among the planners and implementers of China's new countryside and are now in Beijing to attend the annual meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC) to map out the country's development for the next five years.

After comparing notes on their intended motions of legislative debate, Guo Chengzhi and Shang Jinsuo, both deputies from the countryside of Hebei Province, expressed their views on rural development in an interview with China Daily.

Guo has dark complexion and a pair of big hands, typical of dwellers of the harsh conditions in China's northern mountains. He has been head of his home village, Qiannanyu, for more than 40 years, and has transformed it from a community almost destroyed by floods and severe soil erosion into one surrounded by lush orchards, even attracting tourists from big cities.

Shang, from a rural community not far from Guo's, earned his fame by being capable of, at first, managing State-owned grain storage at a profit while the entire industry's losses were chronic, and then expanding his management service to 13 facilities of national grain reserves in northern provinces. He is still planning to have more.

The two men, who are always assigned to hotel rooms next to each other when they come for NPC meetings in Beijing, seemed to represent both sides of the rural economy.

Guo told China Daily about his village first:

Qiannanyu, is a village of only 1,342 people, small by Chinese standards. It is deep in the Taihang Mountains, although nowadays, with modern roads, is just four hours from Beijing by car.

His career as a village head began when he was forced to drop out of technical school to support his family. After merciless floods almost destroyed everything in 1963, he began to lead the villagers to protect the top soil of their homeland by planting trees and grass.

More than 40 years have passed, and now the village is able to claim nearly 95 per cent vegetation coverage and even an award from the United Nations as one of 500 communities with top achievements in environmental protection.

"We're fortunate because we started to go in the right direction earlier than most other villages," Guo said. Trees planted in the 1960s began to yield cash crops, especially chestnuts, for the locals. Their output later went so high that the village spent about 30 million yuan (US$3.70 million) on building modern processing and packaging facilities, and thereby generating more income for the villagers and people nearby.

More recently, Guo introduced 30 new fruit trees, some from overseas. "Come and visit us on May Day," he said. "We'll load your bags with the big, dark red cherries from the trees we have newly planted." But the village is not supplying cherries to market yet. They are all reserved for the tourists who come on fruit-picking holidays.

One rare phenomenon of Qiannanyu is that the village, despite its name, does not actually have a single plot that grows grain. It imports its food entirely and uses all its land resources for the orchards.

Having recently shut down its once profitable but polluting metal factories, the village is trying to make itself a year-round tourist attraction. "We stick to environmentally friendly ways to make money," Guo said.

Guo's popularity grew with the harvest of the trees in the formerly barren village. He has won every village election so far, he boasted to China Daily, with the maximum votes against him in any election being three.

And he certainly has no reason to fear democracy in a community whose per capita annual net income was 5,480 yuan (US$675) in 2005 - along with 50 per cent medical insurance on medical expenses and a 50 per cent subsidy on housing projects. The national average is 3,255 yuan (US$400) with no other benefits.

"We're planning and delivering whatever can be planned for our village," he said. "All I'm thinking about now is, since I'm already 62 years old, how people would remember me in the future."

Compared with Guo's environmental success, Shang would seem a more common type - maybe not among farmers, but in places such as Shanghai's Bund. He has been an avid futures trader for 10 years in the grain markets in Shanghai, Zhengzhou and Dalian on behalf of the State-owned grain storage and trade company he manages.

Dressed in a black suit and a blue tie, Shang actually taught himself grain storage techniques. "The wheat in my storage can remain fresh and in top quality for 10 years," he said. "And lasting good quality brings in profit."

After developing the smallest grain storage service of his province into the largest, he now runs one of the most profitable granaries in the country at a time when the industry is plagued by all sorts of management ills from the planned-economy era.

Looking after 400,000 tons of wheat and corn in the national grain reserves, he is expecting to expand to 30 granaries this year. He kept saying he has "many friends in many places" eager to join him in building his grain management empire.

Commenting on the proposal of the national leaders on building China's "New Countryside," they both stressed the need to find ways to beef up the financial capabilities of the grass-roots communities.

"The first stage of the Chinese reform started from letting farmers go back to their private plots, and that was very good and did help farmers earn more money," Guo said.

"But now, just farming is not enough."

Only manufacturing and service industries can generate more cash for them, he said, adding: "But only by having a strong collective power - in finance and in management - can any rural community become successful in those endeavours.

"So, whatever name you give to a policy, only when farmers can make more money can China have a good countryside."

(China Daily 03/04/2006 page3)