Chapter 36 Three five, Huaxi Evergreen

Huaxi Village is regarded as a model of rural China after the reform and opening up.Like Daqiuzhuang and Nanjie Village, Huaxi Village realized that the secret to prosperity lies in the development of industry.Huaxi Village is under the jurisdiction of Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province.Jiangyin, which is an hour and a half away from Shanghai, is itself a county-level city with an extremely developed economy.Because of its developed economy and its rural construction, Huaxi Village is known as "the first village in China". In 1961, Huaxi Village was formally established. Wu Renbao, 33, became party secretary of the new village. "To attract wealth and treasure, benevolence is necessary for wealth." Later, a reporter explained the village official's name in this way in a report on Wu Renbao.But more than 40 years ago, no one would associate this small village in the south of the Yangtze River with "wealth and treasure" and "wealth".All people can think about is how dilapidated this village with 667 farmers and 841 mu of arable land is, thinking of its thatched houses, mud stacked walls and winding muddy paths between the villages.

However, by 2003, the sales of the village-run factory in this small Jiangnan village in southern Jiangsu had reached 10.6 billion yuan, making it China's first 10 billion village. In 2006, Huaxi Village's total fixed assets exceeded 16 billion yuan, the village's sales exceeded 40 billion yuan, and the tax payment reached 700 million yuan.There are more than 60 enterprises run by Huaxi Village, producing more than 10,000 products, some of which are exported overseas.It also snatched the title of "No. 1 Village in the World" from Daqiuzhuang, another well-known village in Tianjin.Different from Daqiu Village, which was once magnificent, Huaxi Village and Wu Renbao have always stood upright on the land of southern Jiangsu, neither humble nor overbearing, but they have continued to develop.While the famous Chinese villages including Daqiuzhuang have gradually faded out of the sight of Chinese people, Huaxi Village still attracts countless tourists as the No. 1 village in the world; as long as the 80-year-old Wu Renbao is willing to speak, he can still occupy the attention of everyone.

Like most famous villages in China, Huaxi Village is also famous for its timely appearance on the stage set up by the times for performers.Just different from most famous villages in China, Huaxi Village always seems to appear on this stage at the right time. No matter how different the repertoires are on the stage, it can always dance to the beat of the music accurately.Since the birth of Huaxi Village and Wu Renbao's leadership, it has been an advanced model of rural China in almost every historical period, from the advanced model of agriculture learning from Dazhai, to the model of scientific farming, to the model of township enterprises, to the model of spiritual civilization construction .Huaxi Village and Wu Renbao can keenly capture every change in the direction of the wind, whether it is political or economic.

In 1964, Wu Renbao led the villagers in Huaxi to renovate Huaxi's rivers and mountains. They visited more than 1,300 pieces of land and more than 40 rivers in the village. "By 1972, Huaxi had removed 984 farmland banks, leveled 57 mounds, filled in 39 waste river ditches, picked up 1.1 million cubic meters of soil, and converted the original 1,300 sporadic farmland blocks, and transform them into more than 400 high-yield and stable fields that can be drained and irrigated," said the Xinhua News Agency report.The tone of the official report and Huaxi's performance remind people of how Dazhai under the leadership of Chen Yonggui cut down mountains and rebuilt fields, or how the Red Flag Canal transformed rivers and mountains.

If we only stop at this step, Wu Renbao can only be regarded as a model peasant worker, and Huaxi Village can only be a model to be commended by politics.However, in 1968, Wu Renbao realized that Huaxi might never be able to get rid of poverty if it only relied on agriculture. In that year, the population of Huaxi increased by 142 compared with when the village was established in 1961, but the land only increased by 6 mu.This is a typical Malthusian proposition.If a new way out is not found, the growth of the population cannot match the growth of the land. For the village, the future can only be poverty. For the country and even the whole world, the end will inevitably be war and plague.

Like Yu Zuomin, who was two years younger than him, Wu Renbao chose the way of starting a factory.He also believes that without work there is no wealth.It's just that in 1968, this practice was equivalent to betting on one's own political future, and even one's life.He set up a small hardware factory with 20 villagers. "At that time, we must not let the outside world know that it was the time to cut the tail of capitalism. Red flags fluttered in the fields, trumpets sounded, and the inspection comrades left. We turned around and entered the factory." Wu Renbao's son recalled.

As a result, by the time the Hardware Factory was no longer concealed and surfaced in 1978, it had already contributed 1.35 million yuan in profits to Huaxi Village.When Wu Renbao took stock of his family property, Huaxi Village had 1 million yuan in fixed assets, 1 million yuan in bank deposits, and three years of food rations.Later, rural areas all over the country learned from the Xiaogang in Fengyang, Anhui, and implemented the household contract responsibility system. Wu Renbao, who had tasted the sweetness of industry, made a decisive decision and set up a sprayer factory for spraying pesticides on farmland. In 1984, this sprayer The factory earned 2 million yuan.Since then, there have been more and more factories in Huaxi Village in the fields of iron and steel, wool spinning, and metallurgy.By 1988, the annual output value of Huaxi Village had exceeded 100 million yuan, making it a rare 100 million yuan village at that time.

Wu Renbao's most beautiful battle was his decision in 1992 to borrow money to hoard raw materials.On March 1st of this year, before going to bed at two o'clock in the morning, 65-year-old Wu Renbao read reports on Deng Xiaoping's southern tour in Shenzhen Special Zone Daily and People's Daily.Wu Renbao immediately notified the village cadres of Huaxi Village and the directors of the various factories affiliated to the village to hold a meeting in Room 403 of Huaxi South Hospital Hotel, "I think a new round of economic development in China is coming soon! If Huaxi Village does not catch If you seize this opportunity, you will lose a hundred chances to take off! For this reason, I propose that the overriding central task of our Huaxi Village at present is four words... Borrowing money to eat enough!" Huaxi Village used all its own funds, Hoarding a large amount of raw materials for production, Wu Renbao, who has always insisted on "neither external debt nor domestic debt", even personally went out to find the mayor of Wuxi City and borrowed 20 million foreign debts.With the money, Huaxi purchased more than 10,000 tons of steel billets, 1,000 tons of aluminum ingots and hundreds of tons of electrolytic copper.As a result, the aluminum ingots purchased by Huaxi Village at that time were more than 6,000 yuan per ton, which increased to more than 18,000 yuan per ton three months later.

Huaxi Village also produces cigarettes named "Huaxi Village" with its own brand name. Around 1995, Huaxi Village made a net profit of about 20 million yuan without investing a penny in cigarettes alone. In 1999, Huaxi Village went public, becoming the first village in China to be listed on the capital market, raising 290 million yuan. In 2002, Huaxi Village invested 1.2 billion to build a steel plant called "Beigang" in Tangshan, Hebei, with a production capacity of 1.2 million tons.Tobacco, which has never been allowed by private enterprises, the scarce listing quota in 2002, and the iron and steel industry, which is mostly occupied by state-owned enterprises, Huaxi Village can do these things, which is not unrelated to the influence of Wu Renbao and Huaxi.

The economic benefits have also brought improvements in the lives of the villagers.Huaxi is the country's first villa village, the first car village, the first telephone village, color TV village, air-conditioning village, and computer village.Wu Renbao also built Huaxi into an amusement park that looks a bit weird to the outside world.In Huaxi, there is the world's largest bell and the world's largest drum, which cost more than 20 million yuan to cast and weigh 140 tons.When Huaxi Village celebrated its 35th anniversary, Wu Renbao spent 120 million yuan to build a Huaxi Golden Pagoda that is both Chinese and foreign in two and a half years.Because Wu Renbao said that Huaxi Village only accepts opinions and does not accept gifts.The units that came to congratulate did not bring gifts, but only sent supporting stone lions for the golden pagoda built in Huaxi Village.These lions became Huaxi's lion forest.Huaxi also built a museum of 24 filial piety.Huaxi even imitated famous buildings from all over the world, and built the Great Wall, the White House, and the Sydney Opera House in and around Huaxi Village...

Why Huaxi Village can be evergreen? Around 1997, Wu Renbao once explained in a report: "A unit must be healthy and long-lived. My experience is three points: first, autonomy, second, self-knowledge, and third. We have a high degree of professionalism. We Huaxi people neither complain about the previous generation, nor rely solely on the next generation. We must believe in the next generation, and one generation will be better than the next generation, but the main responsibility lies with our generation. I have worked for more than 30 years. Ask me what is the secret of my success? I said, seek truth from facts. There are many difficulties before, but seeking truth from facts is the most difficult, and being the top leader is the most difficult. For more than 30 years, I have been a village official for a long time, and I have also been a township official and county official. I have experienced a' The tortuous process of listening, advocating, fighting, and waking up is actually the process of never seeking truth from facts and moving towards seeking truth from facts in the ideological line. "Listen" in the 1950s. At that time, I was young and inexperienced. , do what the above said, and copy it. The Great Leap Forward, put satellites, followed by saying stupid things and doing stupid things. In 1958, when the output was reported, they reported 10,000 catties of grain per mu, and I reported 3,700 catties. The critics reported that Fake, even though my report is lower than others, but it is also fake. To accumulate manure and shovel foot mud, the new house is five inches deep, and the old house is dug by one foot. As a result, the common people suffer. The young people said, you Wu Renbao has so many shortcomings, I said young people don't laugh at me, if you don't speak the truth from facts, you will make more mistakes than me in the future. In the 1960s, it was "top". When it comes to practical matters, I push it back face to face, but it turns out that the above said "arrogant, arrogant, independent kingdom, this is okay", seeing the truth from facts, it is not important to lose the black hat. Change the top to the soft top, firmly agree to it in person, thank the leaders for their concern, and never implement it behind the scenes. Because the bureaucrats are too high above the whip, "verbal implementation" is equal to "action implementation". Of course, the lack of seeking truth from facts in the past cannot be blamed on the superiors. , the grassroots cadres at the lower level are also responsible. The report is good, the inspection is good, the route of the visit is determined, and the higher-ups do not follow the designated route to visit, and they still have opinions in their hearts. In the 1970s, they were "fighting". At that time, Todai Village branch secretary He and the secretary of the county party committee were both black hats, with heavy burdens and great pressure, so they worked hard on socialism, desperately changing agricultural production conditions, taking grain as the key link, changing two crops to three crops, leveling the land, opening rivers to build roads, and planting rice in river ditches .Everything is dedicated to life, there are both right and wrong, more right and less wrong. "Wake up" in the 1980s. Emancipate the mind, reform and open up, adjust the industrial structure, everything must follow Proceeding from reality, insisting on what is right, and correcting what is wrong, Huaxi has developed rapidly and changed a lot since the 1980s.” If compared with Yu Zuomin, Wu Renbao is obviously more able to embody the survival wisdom of the Eastern style. "According to the characteristics of Huaxi Village, we grasp two points: one is that the richer the collective and the individual, the harder it is to work hard and be thrifty; The second is that the more praise there is, the more modest and prudent we must be; only when we see shortcomings can we keep up with the pace of the times.” Wu Renbao always keeps his figure low, never makes enemies in politics, and smiles and nods to any visitor Bowing.On the road leading to Huaxi today, the big placard still stands: Welcome to Jiangyin Huaxi, Wuxi, Jiangsu, China, although the reputation of Huaxi Village may be much greater than the two administrative divisions above it, Wuxi and Jiangyin. Yu Zuomin often wanted to compare himself politically with Chen Yonggui, who later became Vice Premier of the State Council.At that time, Wu Renbao, who was the secretary of the Jiangyin County Party Committee and a member of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee of the Communist Party of China, insisted on returning to Huaxi Village after being unexpectedly defeated as a representative of the Jiangyin Party Congress in May 1980. Has maintained a high political prestige for himself. When Yu Zuomin became popular, the visitors of Daqiu Village wanted to see the owner of the villa but couldn't.One of the tourism items in Huaxi Village is that the old secretary Wu Renbao went out to meet guests.At a specific moment every week, Wu Renbao will appear on the podium in the auditorium to give a report to the visitors. Before that, the host will welcome the visiting guests in the name of Wu Renbao and Huaxi Village. They will also call out their names.Next, Wu Renbao sat on the stage and spoke in Jiangyin dialect, while his assistant next to him translated his speech into Mandarin almost simultaneously.In this way, everyone is happy.For visiting leaders, Huaxi Village also prepared special cultural programs. Wu Renbao's four sons are called Xiedong, Xiede, Xieping, and Xie'en, meaning to assist Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Deng Xiaoping, and Zhou Enlai. In 2003, he always claimed that he would work until he was 80 years old, and Wu Renbao resigned from office, and selected his fourth son Wu Xie'en as his successor.It’s just that in Jiangyin, Wu Renbao is still the most prestigious entrepreneur. This old man who never had his own office is said to still maintain the habit of going out every day to make inspections and visit villages and factories.