Dairy Cow Commander of Taizhou, Zhejiang Blazes a Trail to Prosperity

At 5 a.m., 45-year-old Yang Pingzi rises early to prepare fodder for nearly 100 dairy cows in his cowshed. It is early summer, the weather is rainy, and the grass along the field edges grows lush. Amid the bustle, the sky gradually brightens. This is the start of an ordinary day for "Dairy Cow Commander" Yang Pingzi.

In 2012, Yang Pingzi rented a cowshed and bought 5 dairy cows, becoming a breeder at the "Hongfu" dairy farm in Sanjia, Jiaojiang. The milk freshly milked each day at the dairy farm is all purchased by dairy producers, so the sales channel is secured. With that in place, increasing output became the key. All his savings had been invested, and where would the money come from to buy new cows? Yang Ziping thought of taking out a bank loan.

"As soon as they heard I had only 5 dairy cows, that I had a non-local household registration, and that I had no assets at all, they would not lend to me."

At his wit's end, Yang Pingzi happened to meet a loan officer from Bank of Taizhou who had come to Sanjia Farm to visit and market loans. He told the loan officer his "startup plan" and even led him to his cowshed. When the loan officer saw it on site, the cows had clearly been carefully tended, every one of them full of vigor, and the cowshed was also swept very clean. Two days later, a small-business loan of 30,000 yuan was issued into Yang Pingzi's hands. After that, his dairy farming scale grew larger and larger, reaching 40 cows in 2014 and nearly 100 by early 2016. As the scale grew, the need for funds also expanded, and the amount of the small-business loan he obtained at Bank of Taizhou rose from 3 wan yuan at the beginning to 8 wan, and then to the most recent 10 wan yuan.

Through the hard work of the husband and wife, the dairy farming business grew better and better. Today Yang Pingzi has become a major cattle raiser at Sanjia Farm, with an annual income of nearly 200,000 yuan. Over the years, as his eldest daughter married and started a family, his daughter and son-in-law also "set up their own household" and began engaging in dairy farming. Yang Pingzi also called his brother-in-law from his hometown to Taizhou to work in this industry. Today, his son-in-law Li Yong and his brother-in-law Yao Jiahu have both become clients of small-business loans, following in Yang Pingzi's footsteps to prosper together.

The reporter learned that the "small-business loan" is a special loan product launched by Bank of Taizhou in 2006, mainly serving small and micro enterprises, individually owned businesses, family workshops, and farming households. Over 10 years, small-business loans have cumulatively issued 71.6 billion yuan, supporting nearly 530,000 small and micro clients. Among them are many entrepreneurs like Yang Pingzi who went to other places to strive for success. Small-business loans do not emphasize collateral, have a low loan threshold, and loan officers also visit households to provide "one-on-one" considerate service, offering financial products suited to workers who in the past could not obtain credit support from financial institutions. The successful road to prosperity of the "Dairy Cow Commander" is being "replicated" in more and more cases.