He Turned Village Into China's Richest
Wu Renbao took a vague concept─'capitalism with Chinese
characteristics'─as the blueprint to turn a farm community into what is
now known in China as the country's richest village.
Mr. Wu, who
died of lung cancer at age 84 on Monday, responded to China's market
overhauls in the early 1980s with a politically savvy strategy to charge
up the economy of Huaxi, the village in eastern Jiangsu province that
he headed as Communist Party secretary. While Mr. Wu kept his party
bosses happy by swearing allegiance to socialism, he turned rice and pig
farmers into millionaires.
For Chinese leaders unsure of how to
embrace market economics without abandoning the Communist party, the
village 85 miles northwest of Shanghai illustrated a working model. His
approach mirrored that of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who sparked
China's post-Mao Zedong economic boom with imprecise concepts such as
his famous 'capitalism with Chinese characteristics.'
Both were
pragmatic men, short in stature, who were criticized during Mao's time,
and neither felt nostalgia for his era. 'I raised cattle and fed pigs
during the day and took care of the disabled son of my landlord in the
morning and night. All this hard work earned me 20 kilos of rice a
year,' Mr. Wu told a Chinese magazine two years ago.
Mr. Wu
pivoted Huaxi's economy from farming toward manufacturing and trade,
with ventures in steelmaking, then liquor, banking and tourism. For
political cover, he took a page from Mao and labeled the assets and
income as collective property of the villagers.
Today, Huaxi's
around 1,600 original residents jointly claim title to the fruits of its
three decades of economic growth, including last year's 58 billion yuan
($9.6 billion) in local gross domestic product, according to town
officials.
'Socialism means 98 out of 100 people are happy,' Mr. Wu told Chinese media in 2006. 'You can't do much about the other two.'
Chih-Jou
Jay Chen, a researcher at Taiwan's Academia Sinica, said senior Chinese
leaders in the 1990s also saw Mr. Wu's careful approach as a potential
alternative should market economics fail. 'They wanted to have some
socialist models or some communist models to be safe,' said Mr. Chen.
Huaxi
holds special status in a nation aspiring to wealth. Most households
boast high per capita income and a car to drive. In 2011, the town's
50th anniversary gift to itself was a pure-gold ox that media said
weighed a ton. It is displayed on the 60th floor of a five-star hotel
nicknamed the Farmer's Apartments that is topped with a golf-ball-shaped
room. It is a highlight of the town's free helicopter tours.
'I
was shocked, and everyone in the village is saddened by the news of his
death,' said Wang Lijuan, a manager at the Huaxi Tourism Agency. 'Mr. Wu
is widely respected by us.' Mr. Wu's death also got attention in
national media on Tuesday, as broadcasters used the village's
transformation as a reminder of strides China has made.
There are
limits to the generosity of Huaxi's community capitalism. The
collective that stakes claim to Huaxi's assets is a tiny subset of the
35,000 people who live there, consisting of residents who hold an
official government identity card from the original village. Ms. Wang
said her salary isn't supplemented with dividends enjoyed by the
original residents.
Mr. Wu had a knack for selling hard-nosed
business decisions as generosity. Rather than sacrifice economic growth
by permitting local workers vacation time, he decided in the 1990s to
bring the world to Huaxi in the form of knockoffs of the White House,
Paris's Arc de Triomphe and the Great Wall.
He combined strict
political control with get-rich-quick economics, according to Wenxian
Zhang, a professor at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., 'which is
probably better described as the 'socialist market economy with Chinese
characteristics.'' Other analysts deride Huaxi's patriarchal,
migrant-dependent system as feudalism.
Though Mr. Wu remained
active in party affairs, he retired as the village's party chief in 2003
and relinquished his key positions to a son, Wu Xie'en. Shares
representing village assets known as Jiangsu Huaxicun Co. 000936.SZ
+0.26% edged up 0.3% on Tuesday on the stock exchange in the city of
Shenzhen.
His funeral is scheduled for the auspicious time of 8:08 a.m. on Friday, said a spokesman for the town Tuesday.
One of his rules to sustain Huaxi's riches: Anyone who leaves town loses all title to the money.
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