Small town, huge potential

A basketball game is underway in Taipan village, Taijiang county, Southwest China's Guizhou Province on January 22, 2025, as part of a village basketball tournament to celebrate the Spring Festival. (Photo/Courtesy of Publicity Department of Taijiang county)

At first glance, Taipan, a village of less than 1,200 people in Southwest China's Guizhou Province, looks more of the same to numerous villages across China. But a stroll down its main road reveals something distinctive about the village that has gained national and international fame. Basketball is ubiquitous. "Welcome to the home of 'Cun BA' in China," reads a poster at the edge of the village. "Cun BA," or "Village BA," stands for village basketball association like the US' NBA. On the main street, several giant screens were livestreaming a basketball game taking place inside a packed venue, where locals sporting ethnic customs cheered on, sang folk songs, and danced to modern music during time-outs.

Locals are quick to point out that they have been holding basketball games after the harvest season for decades. But in 2022, clips of the competitive games and enthusiastic cheering were posed on social media and immediately drew widespread attention in China and overseas.

In total, the "Cun BA" has garnered more than 85 billion views online, according to official data. Since then, there have been basketball games every week and major activities have been organized every month, drawing basketball fans from across the country and even abroad.

In September 2024, a delegation of 80 US students and teachers visited the village and played basketball games with local villagers. Recently, a documentary about "Cun BA" - Game On: Hoops and Dreams in Rural China- has been released in more than 30 countries and regions, gaining millions of views.

This week, just days before the Spring Festival, Taipan held another tournament, under the theme of "Our Spring Festival, the World's Spring Festival," in a nod to the addition of the Spring Festival to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December 2024. The games and Spring Festival celebrations drew famous basketball players, musicians, and others from China and abroad, and were livestreamed by many media outlets online.

Vibrant development

Outside of the venue where all these took place, there were plenty of signs that "Cun BA" is no longer just entertainment for locals after the harvest season, but has become a new, vibrant model of economic development.

Inside a "Cun BA" theme store, T-shirts and local agricultural products like rice that carry the logo of the basketball tournament were on sale. Dozens of meters away, at a huge parking lot, a market has been set up for local farmers and businesses to sell their products, like markets in many places across China for holiday shopping ahead of the Spring Festival. On the streets, many restaurants offering sour beef soups, a beloved local cuisine, were filled with basketball teams and visitors. "The more visitors, the more businesses," the owner of a restaurant told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The games have brought in basketball fans and visitors from across the country. From January to November 2024, the number of visitors to Taijiang county, where Taipan is located, jumped by more than 32 percent year-on-year, and tourism revenue also surged by about 33 percent, according to information the county's publicity department sent to the Global Times on Tuesday. During the period, visitors spent on average 1160.05 yuan ($159.68) per person in the county.

Not just visitors, but some major businesses in China have also come to Taijiang to help boost local development. On Tuesday, as the basketball game was underway, a giant white airship was flying over the venue. During this year's tournament, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), a leading aviation company in the country, dispatched its civil airship, the AS700 "Xiangyun," to the village to help promote low-altitude economy and tourism. The airship is AVIC's first self-developed civil airship with multiple technological breakthroughs and will mainly be used in tourism activities, aerial surveys, patrol services, and emergency communication.

The AS700 "Xiangyun" airship manufactured by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), flies over Taipan village on January 22, 2025. (Photo/Courtesy of AVIC)

As part of a national effort to assign state-owned enterprises to help less developed rural areas boost consumption ahead of the Spring Festival, AVIC has been helping the sales of products from various counties in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, where Taijiang is located. At the Spring Festival market in Taipan, AVIC brought 175 products from various regions. A sales promotion period before the Spring Festival has seen sales of 676 products from AVIC-supported regions totaling 12.28 million yuan as of Monday, the company told the Global Times on Tuesday.

In Taijiang, thanks to the business opportunities brought about by the "Cun BA," the local economy flourished, with the GDP expanding by 10.1 percent year-on-year in 2024, far outpacing the 5-percent national GDP growth rate.

"The continued popularity of 'Cun BA' has helped promote the integrated development of agriculture, culture, sports, and businesses, and created impetus for economic development," a staff member of Taijiang's publicity department told the Global Times.

Aiming higher

Jiang Yiyi, a vice dean of the School of Leisure Sports and Tourism at Beijing Sport University, said that the rise of Taipan to fame was due to its storied tradition of holding basketball games after the harvest season and its rich ethnic culture as well as China's national efforts to promote nationwide sports and fitness and boost development in the vast rural region.

Under its rural vitalization strategy, China has taken a slew of major policy initiatives to boost rural development, from infrastructure building to industrial development. On Tuesday, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued a plan that aims to achieve substantial progress in all-around rural revitalization and promote the modernization of agriculture and rural areas to a new stage by 2027.

"There is a huge potential for development in the rural region, which not only helps improve living standards of rural residents but also offers a great impetus for sustained economic growth for the country," Jiang told the Global Times on Tuesday, noting that the development of rural sports and cultural sectors brings in investment, which translates into jobs for locals and increased spending power among rural residents.

China has more than 2,800 county-level government organizations with a permanent population of 740 million, while the consumer market at the township and village levels accounts for 38 percent of the nation's overall consumer market, according to official data.

Like Taipan, many rural regions across China have also been taking advantage of their local conditions and the rise of social media to promote local tourism and economic development.

Less than two hours away from Taijiang, Dali Dong village in Rongjiang county, in Guizhou, has also gained global fame for its "village super league" soccer games, or Cun Chao. A village in Sanya, South China's Hainan, has also been gaining growing attention for its village volleyball games.

"All of these stories underscore the vitality and the vast potential of sports and culture development in rural areas," Jiang said.

In Taipan, locals are aiming even higher. "We are famous nationally, we are famous internationally, and I think we will be even better," a local resident told the Global Times as he cheered on the team of Taijiang in a game against Kaili, the prefecture capital of Qiandongnan.