Making the people rich is my responsibility - remembering outstanding Communist Party member Bai Liguo
Making the people rich is my responsibility
- A profile of national outstanding Communist Party member Bai Liguo, Party branch secretary and village committee director of Liuxianzhuang Village, Yutian County
????Bai Liguo at work. Photo by Liu Lijun
After attending the celebration of the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, on July 2, Bai Liguo, who was awarded the title of "National Outstanding Communist Party Member", returned to his village as Party branch secretary and village committee director of Liuxianzhuang Village, Yutian County.
When he took up the posts of village Party branch secretary and village committee director in January 2009, Bai Liguo was determined to lead the villagers to prosperity. Today in Liuxianzhuang, per capita income has reached 18,000 yuan.
Bai Liguo said he will continue to implement Liuxianzhuang's "Happy Village Plan" - persisting in the path of "combining industry and agriculture, using industry to support agriculture, and using industry to achieve prosperity", and striving within 5 years to let the villagers live a more comfortable, elegant and modern life.
"I am a Party member, I cannot just focus on my own affairs."
In Yutian County, Bai Liguo is a successful entrepreneur. Starting out as a migrant worker, after more than 20 years of entrepreneurial struggle, he successively set up more than a dozen enterprises and accumulated assets worth hundreds of millions of yuan. His Taili Company has ranked among the top ten fireworks enterprises in the country.
"You have done well these past few years, can you come back and take over from me?" At the end of 2008, Liu Deru, the old Party branch secretary of Liuxianzhuang Village, approached Bai Liguo and tried to persuade him to return to the village.
At that time in Liuxianzhuang, per capita income was less than 3,000 yuan, and the villagers lived a tight life. Bai Liguo was tempted, but met strong opposition from his parents, his wife and his company executives. "I am a Party member, I cannot just focus on my own affairs," Bai Liguo said. "Everyone has ideals in life. More than 20 years of hard entrepreneurship fulfilled my first dream of becoming rich. My second dream is to lead all the villagers to become rich together with me."
In January 2009, Liuxianzhuang Village held elections for a new term of the "two committees". Bai Liguo, approaching 40, was elected by a high vote and returned to the village to shoulder the heavy responsibilities of village Party branch secretary and village committee director.
As soon as he took office, he handed his enterprises over to his family to manage, led village cadres in visiting every household to seek the opinions of the villagers, and held successive meetings of the village "two committees", Party members and village representatives. They decided to start with what the villagers most hoped for, and first build new housing.
Building new housing required a large investment, and the first phase alone needed 50 million yuan. Where would the money come from? At that time the village not only had not a single cent, but also owed a pile of external debts.
Without discussing it with his family, Bai Liguo took 50 million yuan from his own enterprise to get the project started first. When the new housing was half built, there was another funding gap, and the loan could not be obtained. With no other way out, he successively sold his fireworks factory in Inner Mongolia and his quarry, garment factory and beverage factory in the county, raising 160 million yuan to advance to the village.
"I am a village cadre, and even more a Communist Party member, so I must be responsible for whatever I do." Facing his family's lack of understanding, Bai Liguo said he had promised the people that within 5 years he would complete the renovation of the village's new housing. When the village lacked money, he would help if he was able.
A promise is worth a thousand pieces of gold. In four and a half years, 270,000 sq m of new housing rose in Liuxianzhuang. The village's 525 households and 2,006 people moved into new homes, freeing up 680 mu of land.
Seven years have passed, and the changes in Liuxianzhuang have astonished people. The villagers were even more pleasantly surprised to find that Bai Liguo's promises were turning into reality step by step.
- The low, dilapidated old houses are gone, replaced by neatly planned, elegantly environed new housing that even city dwellers envy;
- Public service facilities such as kindergartens, primary schools, gymnasiums, clinics, health care centers and villager service centers are fully equipped;
- Wallets are fuller, with the villagers' annual per capita net income increasing from 6,000 yuan in 2009 to 18,000 yuan;
- Villagers regularly receive rice, flour and oil, are exempt from property fees and heating fees, receive subsidies for participating in the new rural cooperative medical scheme, and get rewards when their children advance in school.
"We must let the masses all live good lives"
For more than 7 years, relying on his successful experience in running enterprises, Bai Liguo led the village "two committees" to base themselves on local advantages, develop characteristic industries, strive to strengthen the village collective economy, and guide the masses to prosperity and a moderately prosperous life, opening a path of common development of "using enterprises to drive the village and integrating village and enterprise".
Today's Liuxianzhuang Agricultural and Commercial Group has more than 20 subsidiaries and industrial departments, covering multiple fields such as agriculture, commerce and trade, finance, and cultural media. In 2015, the village achieved a total industrial and agricultural output value of 180 million yuan.
Bai Liguo said, "Making the people rich is my responsibility, and we must let the masses all live good lives." With an entrepreneur's sensitivity, as soon as he took office he seized the opportunity of the key project construction of the Changsheng Logistics Market in Yutian County, invested 20 million yuan to build the "Liuxianzhuang Fada Industrial Park", and soon 8 enterprises with high technological content and good market prospects settled in the park, arranging more than 700 people from the village to work as factory workers.
Relying on the location advantage of the nearby Yaihongqiao Market, the largest market east of Beijing, Bai Liguo also actively encouraged villagers to develop a small commodity economy, and within a very short time more than 50 relatively large enterprises emerged in the village.
In 2009, Bai Liguo advocated and initiated the establishment of the Fuda Farmers' Professional Cooperative, transferring the villagers' contracted land into the collective in the form of shareholding, managed uniformly by the cooperative, and guiding the masses to develop ecological and high-efficiency agriculture. More than 200 farming households in the village enthusiastically joined the cooperative, with an average annual income of 3,500 yuan per person.
In 2011, he led the whole village in using the land transferred by the Fuda Farmers' Professional Cooperative to invest more than 5 million yuan to build the Yutian County Thousand-Mu Standardized Edible Mushroom Demonstration Base of the National Modern Agriculture Demonstration Zone, building 91 shiitake mushroom greenhouses, and smoothly passing base certification and registration of the "Liuxian" trademark. The shiitake mushrooms produced were recognized as "pollution-free products" by the Agricultural Products Inspection Center of the Ministry of Agriculture in 2012, and have now moved beyond Yutian and successively entered high-end markets such as Beijing, Tianjin and Tangshan, generating annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan.
To further expand the influence of Liuxianzhuang Agricultural and Commercial Group, Bai Liguo also established the Yutian County Yaihongqiao Chamber of Commerce, covering large, medium and small enterprises in the village and surrounding areas.