College grads become new blood in Chinese villages

BEIJING, July 4 -- In the hot sun Fu Yongxian picked ripe watermelons on the farm. He looks so tan that people could hardly believe he was once a college student in Shanghai, China's most prosperous city.

The 29-year-old came to Zaozhuang village, Baofeng County of Henan Province in north China, four years ago. He is now head of the village.

"We college grads are sent to villages to help farmers get rich. The Party never said life was comfortable in the countryside," he said.

Fu was one of the 130,000-plus college grads who now work as village officials in the vast Chinese countryside. China has planned to send 100,000 more college grads starting from 2008 to villages in five years.

Five years ago, the idea that a college grad would work as a village official was unheard of.

With the husbandry knowledge Fu acquired in the Shanghai Institute of Technology, he helped villagers with livestock breeding. In four years, 60 percent of the villagers benefited from raising pigs.

Now, the villagers sell pigs in China's large cities such as Shanghai and Wuhan. Their average annual income leaped from 1,600 yuan (234 U.S. dollars) in 2004 to 6,100 yuan in 2008.

Fu's parents, farmers in another village in the same county, had wished that Fu could live a comfortable life in a city after graduation. Just when Fu was desperate for a job in 2004, Baofeng County launched its college graduate recruitment plan. He took the opportunity.

In China, an increasing number of college graduates like Fu, frustrated by the keen competition in China's large cities, find their places in its rural parts where talents are most needed.

In the neighboring province of Shanxi, every village official post is competed for by 20 college grads this year.

Villages are often compared to nerve endings of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC). College graduates sent to villages not only eases intense employment pressures, but also brings talent to the grassroots level to support local development.

Statistics from the organization department of the CPC Baofeng county committee show that the county's Party members are 45 years old on the average and 77 percent of them do not have college degrees. The average age of Party members in the Zaozhuang village branch is 51.

Before Fu came to the village, the village's Party chief Chang Qingji, who has remained at his post for three decades, was the most educated Party member. Chang finished high school.

Chang, 58, said "my generation is inferior to the college students in knowledge and skills. The villagers refuse to follow our instructions as we do not have the ability to lift them out of poverty -- which sometimes makes the relationships between villagers and officials turn sour."

Party branches in the villages urgently need college graduates to help carry out China's poverty-relief and democracy promotion policies, said Wang Hongjing, Party chief in Baofeng County.

Compared with other villagers, Fu is full of brilliant ideas. He agreed to accept crops, which were sold to the cities later, as payment for watermelon to promote sales.

When he saw a highway was to be completed, Fu encourage the villagers to plant tree seedlings in the farms to cater to the future need of the roadside greenbelt.

Similarly, when a college grad named Yang Junsen came to Miantang Village, Shexian County of Anhui Province in east China, in 2007, he instantly noticed that local loquat farmers had little idea about market promotion.

He persuaded villagers to sell loquat fruits in unified packing boxes and publish sales information on the Internet, which helped loquat farmers earn 20 percent more last year than in previous years.

By the end of 2008, the number of college graduate village officials has exceeded 130,000. They can be seen in every part of China except for Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Beijing leads the country with two college graduate village officials in each of its3,955 villages.

He Bingsheng, president of China Agricultural University and a noted scholar, said China needs a lot of officials who work at grassroots level and do their jobs well, as the country is striving to build a well-off society by 2020.

College grads are new blood in this great course of China, he said.