Thriving strawberry industry brings wealth to locals in NE China's Liaoning

"I don't have to worry about selling my quality strawberries," said Fang Ming, a villager from Xiaodianzi township, Donggang, a county-level city overseen by Dandong city in northeast China's Liaoning Province.

Several years ago, Fang took the lead in renting two greenhouses at an agricultural industrial park in the township to grow strawberries. Fang's annual income now exceeds 300,000 yuan ($41,718).

Photo shows Donggang strawberries. (Photo courtesy of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Donggang Municipal Committee)

In the past, nine of the 11 administrative villages in the township experienced a weak collective economy. The township then developed the strawberry industry by building an agricultural industrial park and establishing cooperatives, said Liu Zhengyi, Party chief of the township.

The agricultural industrial park has created jobs for 400 people and brought around 1.6 million yuan of income to the villages' collective economy.

The township serves as an example of the thriving strawberry industry in Dandong city.

Strawberries have become a calling card of the city. In recent years, the city has continuously expanded its strawberry cultivation scale, improved strawberry planting techniques, guaranteed the quality of the fruit, and enhanced the brand influence of the fruit.

The total strawberry planting area in Dandong exceeds 90,000 mu (6,000 hectares), with an annual output surpassing 270,000 tonnes.

The city has also rolled out favorable policies to support the construction of rural e-commerce infrastructure, the cultivation of rural e-commerce talent, and the registration of agriculture-related e-commerce enterprises to promote the sales of Dandong strawberries.

Donggang alone has over 6,600 registered e-commerce companies and individual businesses, with more than 15,000 online stores. E-commerce accounts for 70 percent of Donggang's total sales of fresh strawberries.

Donggang is the main production area of Dandong strawberries. Nearly 100,000 farming households in Donggang are engaged in growing strawberries, with income from the fruit accounting for over 60 percent of their total income. The annual output of fresh strawberries in Donggang is worth over 6 billion yuan.

In Dandong, the Liaoning Strawberry Research Institute of Science and Technology has introduced more than 20 new high-quality domestic and international strawberry varieties, and promoted the planting of these varieties on a large scale. The institute has also promoted more than 30 advanced strawberry production technologies in the city.

Dandong boasts of over 100 strawberry varieties. The city can supply fresh strawberries to domestic and international markets nine months a year.

The city has also seen the rapid development of the strawberry processing sector, developing over 30 types of strawberry products such as strawberry juice, jam, and canned goods.