Huaxi Village in Jiangyin，Jiangsu is a model villagein working for common prosperity undersocialism and building a new socialist countryside.
Its southern Chinese pastoral charm and rich rurallife are the two main features that attract outside visitors.
This beauti-ful and fertile patch of land is the cradleof Wu culture as well asthe place where modernindustry and commerceand the rural enterprisewere born and prospered in China，leading people to call it“the number one village under heaven.”
The original area of Huaxi Village was only 0.96 square kilometerswith a population of over 1，500.A small hardware plantset up in 1969 without fanfare by a villager named WuRenbao is considered the starting point for the prosperityof the village.This poor southern village with a debtof 250，000 yuan has now become“Huaxi Village Group”covering 9 major companies and over 60 smaller enterpriseswith a total economic worth of over 30 billionyuan.This can only be called an economic miracle.
Huaxi Village has adhered to a path of“relying on thecollective economy and working for common prosperity.”
Wu Renbao，the veteran Party secretary of the village，didnot take a rigid and dogmatic approach to the collectiveeconomy.He forged a new approach to the developmentof the collective economy by taking into considerationthe political climate and starting from the actual conditionsof the village.Wu made the principle a“two-eightsplit”the way for the local residents themselves to accumulatefunds and this principle is still followed today.
Two tenths of the yearly bonus goes to the individual andthe other eight tenths stays in the Group as stock，whichpays dividends but may not be sold.During the periodbetween June 2001 and September 2004 Huaxi Villagemerged with 16 nearby villages under the administrativepolicy of“merging townships and villages.”Thisexpanded the population to 30，000 and the area to 30 square kilometers.Wu then introduced hisapproach in which the election of village committees andgovernance of the other 16 participating villages remainsin the hands of the individual villages.Five other areas，economic regulation，use of cadres，arrangement of labor，welfare benefits and master plan for village development，are all unified.This approach provided for successful inclusionof these 16 villages in the common developmentof the new greater Huaxi Village.In 2005 Huaxi Villagehad a total sales volume of 30.78 billion yuan，assets ofthe village level collective economy totaled 11.39 billionyuan and average individual income was 65，000 yuan.
“True prosperity means having both material and intellectualprosperity.”Huaxi Village has paid close attentionto both economic development and ethical villagegovernance in accordance with the law.On the basis ofevery family with their house and every household havingtheir own car，the village provides the conditions forvillagers to have“full pockets as well as spiritual stimulation.”
In the 1990s the village set up a unique“companyfor cultural and intellectual development”and the veteranParty secretary Wu Renbao personally wrote the“VillageSong，”In Praise of Prosperity and Shaking off Poverty.
He also launched an education campaign throughoutthe greater village called“the six loves”（love for Party，country，Huaxi Village，relatives，friends，and self），whichalso emphasized respect for elders，thus creating an socialatmosphere of respect for senior citizens and love ofchildren.In the late 1990s Huaxi Village set up the HuaxiSpecial Arts Troupe，which government leaders called，“China’s First Rural Troupe”and whose performanceshave become large banquet of cultural and intellectualtreats for the people.In addition，the village put up statuesrepresenting“Eight Immortals Cross the Sea，”“SummoningZhuge Liang Three Times，”“The Cowherd andthe Weaver Girl”and Confucius to meet the needs of economicand social development at different times to teachthe villagers through fine traditional Chinese culture.Thevillage now has full range of facilities for cultural and recreationalactivities，including a public space for traditionalperformance artists，sport grounds，ice-skating rink，Karaoke，discos and movie theaters，providing villagerswith a rich cultural life and diverse spare-time activities.
Huaxi Village has become a window for introducingpeople from China and abroad to China’s countryside.
Since the village was opened up to the outside world in1994 nearly a million domestic and foreign tourists a yearhave been visiting and touring Huaxi Village and the villagershave been warmly serving them with traditionallocal dishes such as wonton and meat strips with chives.
