Huaxi: The socialist village where everyone is wealthy [View all]

[Starry Messenger]

I never know what to think about China. I have Marxist friends who swear they are socialist and I recently met a Chinese Communist who was very committed to working on socialism with the US socialists. So I was interested when I saw this link on Twitter today and thought I'd pass it along here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/huaxi-the-socialist-village-where-everyone-is-wealthy-6290583.html

Huaxi is a "model socialist village", according to local officials, and was founded by local Communist Party secretary Wu Renbao in 1961. His foresight was to transform a poor farming community into a super wealthy community, built on its clever adaptations of modern agribusiness methods, then its diversification into steel mills, its logistics firms, and its textile businesses.

The commune listed on the stock exchange in 1998 and is now a major corporation in its own right. Its subsidiary companies, built into something that resembles a modern-day conglomerate, exports to more than 40 countries around the world. Huaxi is where Chinese people come to learn how to get rich. At a time when the rest of the world, and indeed much of China, is trying to absorb an economic slowdown, Huaxi is like a parallel universe.

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Far below, you see the villas and the luxury cars. Every villager gets a share of the corporation's profits and is entitled to a car, a house, free healthcare and free cooking oil.

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The original founding families, who are known as "stakeholders", number around 1,600 and the average household income is around £100,000 a year, once all the bonuses, pensions and wages are factored in. White BMWs are ubiquitous and the murals, instead of depicting socialist realist muscled workers in overalls, have pictures of happy families living in wealthy villas.