China's Model Village: from Political Symbol to Brand Name

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, June 27, 2002

China's Model Village: from Political Symbol to Brand Name

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In a bright and spacious garment workshop, a 21-year-old woman, Zhang Ling, is proficiently operating a power-driven sewing machine. With her nimble and swifthands, she sews fashionable shirts bearing the label "Dazhai, China".

Dazhai village, in Xiyang County of north China's Shanxi province, is a once-famed village in the Taihang Mountains with a population of some 500.

In the early 1960s, Dazhai villagers created high-yield terraced farmland out of barren hillsides, a feat some people called miraculous. At the time their success reached Beijing and won praises from late Chairman Mao Zedong, and the village soon came to the limelight. From the 1960s to the mid-1970s, it was held up as a national pace-setter and a fine example in China's agricultural sector. And more than 10 million people from both at home and abroad came to visit and learn from its experience duringthe 10-plus year period.

Dazhai became the only tiny village whose name could be traced and found even on a map of China at that time.

"Tremendous changes have since taken place not only in the lives of the Dazhai villagers, but also in their way of thinking,"said Guo Fenglian, who became famous along with the star village and was then known as the "iron girl", who defied all hardships and difficulties in "fighting the nature".

Guo, now an astute and efficient woman in her early 50s, acknowledged that Dazhai entered the best period of development inits history during the past 10 years because of drastic changes brought about by the practice of a market economy.

In today's Dazhai village, passersby cannot find any eye-catching "slogans" and no one could be seen flocking to the village to learn how to perform agricultural miracles. Instead, visitors can time and again hear the rumble of machinery and the hawking of peddlers.

Since she was given the honorary title of the chairman and general manager of the Dazhai Economic Development Company in 1991,Guo Fenglian has begun trying to find a way to help her fellow villagers to become better-off. The next spring, She founded Dazhai's first joint venture with another province in China.

To date, Dazhai village has set up 12 businesses with combined assets worth more than 90 million yuan (10.84 billion U.S. dollars).

According to Guo, most village products are labeled "Dazhai, China," ranging from chemicals, building materials, drinks and garments to farm produce and byproducts. Last year, "Dazhai, China" products earned the village an income of 90.5 million yuan (10.9million US dollars) and a pre-tax profit of 22.75 million yuan (2.73 million US dollars).

The "Dazhai" brand has made the villagers affluent and, thanks to it, Xiyang county to which Dazhai village belongs, attracted 13development programs, some of which approved by central ministries.

Meanwhile, Dazhai village has developed a series of tourist attractions in recent years, drawing 300,000 visitors each year and bringing the village an income of six million yuan (720,000 USdollars).

There have been more noticeable changes in the village. Dazhai,which had 96.38 hectares of arable land a decade ago, has currently only 20 hectares. And most of the arable land has been turned into orchards and dense woods in the past decade. Hence, the rate of forest cover in the village is 68 percent, much higherthan elsewhere in China.

Today, not a single household in the village is solely engaged in farming, and more than 80 percent of villagers now work in the industrial and tertiary sectors. For eight consecutive years, Dazhai has been the top taxpayer in Xiyang county, and the per-capita income of local villagers has risen to over 4,000 yuan from 700 yuan 10 years ago.

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