1、1Cijiawa-Socialist New CountrysideIN this village everyone over 60gets an old-age pension and farm-ing is no longer the only way ofmaking a living.People use ATMsmart cards to draw out their wages,year-end bonus or stock market divi-dends.There are no “overnight mil-lionaires“ here and no abject poo
2、r.Thevillage has trodden the road of prosper-ity for all.It is Caijiawa Village,in themountainous Miyun County northeastof Beijing. Caijiawa (population 2,600 in 800households) is four kilometers east ofthe county seat and 500 meters fromthe Mujiayu exit of the Beijing-CheugdeExpressway.Its 1,333-he
3、ctare area isbounded by mountains to the east andsouth,and by the Chaohe River to thewest.Despite being rich in natural re-sources,prior to 2003 Caijiawas econo-my was very weak: a number of village-run enterprises suffered heavy lossesand collapsed like dominoes.Mostvillagers just scraped by on the
4、ir littlepatch of farmland.During the droughtyears from 2OOl to 2003,not a singlegrain was reaped from the parchedfields.The housing was old - datingback to the 1950s in some cases - andin poor repair; the potholed roads werea total mess,covering you 2“in dust onsunny days and in mud on rainy days,“
5、as a local saying puts it. But within the short span of sevenyears,Caijiawa has been transformed.Ithas emerged from poverty as an affluentcommunity whose wealth is known farand wide.Today,Caijiawa looks morelike a town than a village and you haveto look hard to see any large stretch offarmland.But t
6、he more “townified“ feelcomes without the rush and noise ofthe city.In its industrialization and ur-banization process,an coo-socialist newcountryside has taken shape. Gone are the cramped single-storyhouses.In their place stand spaciousand bright new multi-stories.Beauti-ful garden communities have
7、 sprungup,providing 2oo,ooo square metersof living accommodation.Each dwell-ing comes ready to occupy,with fit-out,flooring,lighting and decoration all paidfor by the local government. These days the quality of life for Cai-jiawa villagers differs little from that ofurbanites.Seniors have retirement
8、 in-surance; the village children are bussedto school; theres a new healthcare cen-ter and access to drinking water.Ratherthan leaving home to find casual work,the villagers can find suitable work closeto home.This better standard of living- not 3that far from an urban dream -came from a committed e
9、ffort directedto industrial development,economicgrowth and the common weal. In 2003,a new head official of Cai-jiawa Village was elected.This was WangDalin,an open-minded self-made man,one ready to innovate.Starting with abank loan of RMB 50,000,Wang Dalinhad launched his own business in 1992,gradua
10、lly becoming a successful busi-nessman,an RMB billionaire. Determined to help his fellow vil-lagers improve their lot,Wang Dalinstepped aside from his business in-terests and ran for election.Using his own business management experience,Wang rode the wave of agricultural de-velopment.He organized th
11、e transfer ofland-use rights from iadividual farmersto the village itself,on the principle ofvoluntary participation,compensationand safeguarding the villagers interests.Now the farmlands and mountain areasare managed intensively .by the villageentity. Under his leadership the village hascreated a g
12、ood eeo-environment,devel-oped a modern “metro-agriculture“ andincreased the added value of its farmproducts.Fragmented plots of farmlandand mountain area resources owned bydifferent families have been joined upand the villagers have developed 4local-specialty products to draw in visitors. Cherry or
13、chards have been plantedand P.Y.O.gardens offer visitors hands-on picking of fruits and vegetables inevery season.Then there are 54 hect-ares of hothouses cosseting tropicalfruits,vegetables and flowers; medicinalplants for use in foods and toiletries areplanted below the fruit trees; there isthe to
14、urist magnet of Butterfly Valley,where thousands of different butterfliesare bred.In Caijiawa,traditional farm-ing has been turned into a multi-facetedindustry,a mix of farming,leisuretourism,P.Y.O.,as well as hospitalityfacilities.The outcome has been a bigincrease in villagers incomes. Drawing on
15、its collective capital thevillage bought shares in 12 companies;this cooperation attracted them to setup operations in the 27-hectare CaijiawaIndustrial District,where downstreamprocessing of subsidiary agriculturalproducts has become a major money-spinner.Farmers process the localfruits,vegetables,
16、fungi and soybeanson a large scale.Here tourists can wit-ness the process and sample the deli-cious finished products.The “make it-see it-taste it-buy it“ formula has proveda new tourist draw and a boost for localindustry. Its ambitions do not stop here.Cai-jiawa plans to become a 5leisure resort,en
17、couraging famous enterprises toconstruct leisure parks,luxury hotels,convention centers and apartmentswithin its boundaries,making a newdestination for green tourism northeastof Beijing. “Without industry,all talk of a newcountryside would be empty rhetoric.I couldnt let this out-of-the-way spotrema
18、in in grinding poverty,“ explainedWang.Transplanting his businessmethods into village reconstruction,Wang has put all of his energies into theproject,even though his own businessinterests have suffered financially fromhis absence.His reward is to see villagelives changing for the better. A quick sum
19、mary shows what Cai-jiawa has already achieved: a new ag-riculture district with an area of 333hectares; investment in a sight-seeingindustrial park of 27 hectares; 96 per-cent of its villagers in new homes;average net income per capita of RMB20,000; village revenue of RMB 150million; and collective capital exceed-ing RMB 400 million (all 2009 figures).Future plans include investing RMB 6billion into an 87-hectare eco-resort.
