China's 'richest village'

A 72-storey skyscraper, helicopter taxis, a theme park and rows upon rows of luxurious villas, this is as extravagant as a village could be.

Welcome to Huaxi, a place situated in east China's Jiangsu Province and dubbed 'the richest village' of the country.

Every one of its 2,000 residents is said to have more than one million yuan (£116,000/$143,000) in the bank; and each family is given a car and a villa by the authority once they move in.

But the catch is, once you leave, you leave lose all your belongs.
 

Huaxi, which claims to run under a strict Socialist system, celebrated its 55th anniversary last month.

The village is administrated by Jiangyin city in Jiangsu Province, a coastal region traditionally known for its abundant agricultural resources and beautiful landscapes.

It is a two-hour drive from China's economic powerhouse Shanghai.

For years, Huaxi has been used by the Chinese authority as a showcase of success to prove how the Communist regime has turned a poor village into a super wealthy region in half a century.

Above the entrance to Huaxi, a huge sign that reads 'the number one village under the sky' is placed on the gate. This is another nickname the country has given to the village.

Huaxi's fortune appears to be immense.

The village hit the headlines across the country in 2003 when it announced that its yearly economic volume had reached 100 billion yuan (£11.7 billion/$14.4billion), according to Economic Strategies and Practice of Modern China.

One year later, Huaxi announced that the average annual salary of its residents was 122,600 yuan (£14,319/$17,717) - about 40 times the average income of a farmer in China.
 

To show off its economic might, the village even spent three billion yuan (£350 millon/$430million) building its own skyscraper in 2011.

The 72-storey structure is dubbed the Hanging Village of Huaxi.

Soaring 328 metres (1,076ft) into the sky of Huaxi, the impressive building is four metres taller than the Eiffel Tower (324m) in Paris, nine metres taller than the Chrysler Building (319m) in New York and 18 metres taller than the Shard (309m) in Central London.

Inside the towering structure is the 'super five-star' Long Wish International Hotel. The 826-room hotel contains 16 presidential suites and one 'gold' presidential suite which will cost the guest a 100,000-yuan dent (£11,600) to check in for the night.

The presidential suites are typical representations of the Chinese ideas of wealth: large crystal chandeliers, gilded shelves, marble baths, and mahogany furniture.

On the 60th floor, the same level of the golden presidential suite, there is not just an amazing view to be enjoyed, but also a bling statue of an ox crafted from one tonne of pure gold.

Also in 2011, Huaxi celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding by staging a lavish entertainment gala, inviting A-list Chinese stars to sing and dance.

The village also has its own luxury transport company, which sends, not cars, but helicopters to shuttle its residents. The operator, Tongyong Airline Company, said all journeys to surrounding cities could be made in less than 10 minutes.

As if all the above are not enough, the impressive village has also constructed a theme park which houses replicas of famous monuments, such as the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.
 

In addition, a village museum containing 800 ancient relics has been built whose appearance resembles China's top-notch Palace Museum.

How Huaxi leaped from a rural village to a fortune magnet remains some sort of a mystery.

The residents in the village have treated their means to wealth as a top secret. Media access is strict: journalists are not allowed to visit the community without being scrutinised by the local officials.

China state-controlled mainstream media, including People's Daily and Xinhua News Agency, use Huaxi to trumpet the success of a Communist leadership, billing it as 'a model socialist village'.

Wu Renbao, the village's former secretary of Chinese Communist Party, was said to be the main reason of the village's transformation.

State media said that Wu's 'honest and contemporary' leadership had led Huaxi to prosperity. In almost all of the media pictures, Wu, who passed away in 2013, could be seen making a speech to a happy crowd.

Economic Strategies and Practice of Modern China, a book published by the China Financial and Economic Publishing House in 2014, gave their explanation on Huaxi's mysterious societal system.

According to the book, Huaxi follows a strict collective economy undertaking.
 

In late 1970s, right after China's notorious Cultural Revolution, the village's leadership made a bold decision - allocating all the farming work to 30 villages and assigning the rest of the labour to the upcoming manufacture sector. Apparently, this has put Huaxi ahead of the other villages, towns and even cities on the economic curves.

The book also said that Huaxi established itself as a commercial corporation in 1994, producing steel, wielded pipes, textile and clothes. It went public on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 1999.

Previous media reports have suggested that every one in the village have at least one million yuan (£116,000/$143,000) savings and is sent a car to drive and a villa to live in by the authority once they become official residents.

The book has also explained the principle behind these welfare.

Apparently, the residents of Huaxi, most of whom work for companies owned by the village, are only able to cash 30 per cent of their wages - the rest of their assets are managed by the village's companies as floating capital.

Besides, the residents' annual bonuses, usually three times their wages, can not be drawn. Instead, they are given in the form of company stock.

In short, the village's assets are managed and controlled by its leaders, and they can not be taken away by the residents if they decide to move.
 

Huaxi's highly centralised economic and social system have also sparked controversy. Some media think the village is used by the Communist Party as a tool of propaganda and is a real-life Truman Show.

Southern Weekly, a magazine known for its out-spoken commentaries, revealed 'the truth' of Huaxi in a report in 2011.

The article claimed that Huaxi's success was feeding on its fast aggregation with nearby villages. By drawing new villages under Huaxi's centralised leadership, the officials were able to take their assets from some 33,000 residents and use them to invest in the development of the original Huaxi village, with a population of 2,000.

The report claimed that the new Huaxi villagers were left to live in an unfair and dire condition.

Gu Zhijian, a human activist from Jiangsu Province, told U.S.-based Chinese channel New Tang Dynasty Television that 90 per cent of Huaxi's assets were in fact owned by Wu Renbao's family.

Gu said: 'Wu is special. He took advantage of the government's desire for an exemplary village [to showcase] the social system of public ownership. '

Gu said Wu ran Huaxi the same way the Communist Party ran China, as such the residents in Huaxi were in fact deprived of economic and social freedom.

A web user posted on the forum of People's Daily saying that the villagers in Huaxi were not allowed to use their cash at will. As a result of the centralised economy, they could not withdraw their cash without permission and even after they managed to, they could only use their cash to purchase assets owned by Huaxi, such as land and stock.

More than five decades after Wu Renbao founded the village, Huaxi remains to be one of the most wealthy, mysterious and controversial communities in China.