Zhang Chao, First Secretary of Xinxingbao Village, chooses the right development path and leads the villagers to prosperity

Xinxingbao Village in Fanhe Town, Tieling County has always relied on rice and corn as its main crops. Limited by scale and lacking effective sales channels, the villagers' incomes were not high. Now, under the leadership of First Secretary Zhang Chao, the whole village has adopted an "Internet Plus agriculture" operating model, achieving integrated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in grain production, processing and sales, and the villagers' incomes have multiplied.

In early summer, Xinxingbao Village greets the eye with stretches of green rice paddies. As rice irrigation reaches its critical period, many villagers are busy in the fields. The dredging project for the water supply and drainage canals, which took a full month of hard work to complete, has provided a guarantee for rice irrigation. Villager Zhang Deyou, working in the field, told the reporter: "Thanks to Secretary Xiao Zhang, who was busy running around, the canal was finally repaired."

The Secretary Xiao Zhang that villager Zhang Deyou speaks of is Zhang Chao, the First Secretary dispatched to Xinxingbao Village by the Municipal Party Committee Organization Department. After arriving in Xinxingbao Village in 2015, Zhang Chao bound himself tightly to this land. "Economic development is the foundation of all rural undertakings, and to develop the rural economy, one must choose the right path," Zhang Chao said. Xinxingbao Village's collective economy was weak, villagers' income sources were singular, and traditional sales methods meant the rice the villagers grew could not fetch a good price. Drawing on his understanding of the Internet, Zhang Chao started with rice planting, processing and sales, built a distinctive product brand, launched online sales, and formed a pattern of integrated primary, secondary and tertiary industries.

"Fanshuixiang Wetland Rice" is the "signboard" of Xinxingbao Village's rice. To build this brand, Zhang Chao took great pains; from choosing the name to processing and packaging, right through to the final registration, he personally attended to every detail. Fanshuixiang Wetland Rice is now sold to Shandong, Jiangsu and other places, the price of the whole village's rice has risen, and demand exceeds supply. The villagers had never imagined that rice could also be sold on the Internet; sitting at home without having to hawk their goods, they could sell their rice, and at a higher price than usual. Zhang Deyou told the reporter: "Selling grain used to be very hard for us, but now we sell the rice easily and get the money in hand."

The new sales model let the villagers taste the sweetness of success, and the first step of raising villagers' incomes was successfully taken. Zhang Chao then shifted his focus from paddy fields to dry fields. Xinxingbao Village's dry fields were all planted with corn, and judging by prices over the past two years, planting corn meant losing money, yet a large part of the dry fields could not be converted to paddy fields. How to adjust the planting structure thus became a difficult problem facing Zhang Chao. Zhang Chao made several trips to Shenyang and other surrounding cities for research and study, drew on the experience of areas that had succeeded in greenhouse development, and led the villagers to take up greenhouse cucumber cultivation. On land that had originally grown corn, cucumber greenhouses rose one after another. Afterwards, they sold the cucumbers by order, saving transportation costs and increasing the farmers' returns. Villager Wu Guangjie told the reporter: "I used to farm dry fields, and one mu of land brought in only a bit over 200 yuan. After setting up greenhouses, the income from one mu of my land is twenty to thirty times what it was."

Besides increasing villagers' incomes, in the past two years Xinxingbao Village has also built a medical room, a library (with more than 2,000 books at present), a cultural square and other facilities. Using these venues, it has carried out activities such as Legal System Publicity Day, square dancing training and free medical consultations, and, in contact with relevant municipal departments, established a food and drug science popularization publicity station to effectively strengthen villagers' awareness of food and medication safety. The village opened a WeChat public account to promptly publicize village affairs big and small to the villagers, promote fine traditional culture, legal and scientific knowledge, and spread positive energy.

(Tieling Daily, reporter Yang Yang)