Zhangjiagang's Yonglian village steps on the gas to expand

After decades of efforts in promoting all-round development, Yonglian village in the town of Nanfeng in Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu province, has become a national pilot village for reform and opening up.

The village was founded in the 1970s and was the poorest village in Zhangjiagang city with an annual per capita income of 68 yuan ($9.95) in the early years, according to Wang Lei, a local villager.

Since 1995, the village has expanded in size five times in order to expand its development space. The number of villagers has increased from about 800 to more than 10,000 and its area has reached 10.5 square kilometers.

The village has insisted on coordinated development for its manufacturing, agriculture and service industries over the past 40 years, Wang said.

The village exhibition center, proudly displaying its development achievements, shows that the village began its modernization process in 2005, and completed those efforts in the four sectors of manufacturing, agriculture, infrastructure construction and management.

To date, the village has established a complete range of public facilities including kindergartens, hospitals and business precincts, and has achieved great success in its steel industry operated by local companies, officials said.

Official data showed that in 2017, sales revenue of local companies and firms reached 40.3 billion yuan, and the villagers' per capita annual income hit 43,000 yuan.

Located in the northeast of Zhangjiagang, Nanfeng town has engaged in heavy investment in transportation to promote the growth of local companies.

The Jiangsu Jinling Sports Equipment Co is an example of how local companies can grow by developing overseas markets, according to Lin Chuncai, an executive of the company.

More than 85 percent of the indoor-basketball hoops in China are produced by the company, according to Lin.

"With the development of the market economy and the increasing trend of intelligent manufacturing, we have also changed our development strategy," he said.

In the past, the company focused on developing traditional sectors, he added.

Nanfeng is a crucial industrial town and the developed transportation in its neighborhood has helped manufacturing companies to achieve greater development, he said.

"Zhangjiagang is an emerging transportation hub in Jiangsu province, which has enabled us to expand our businesses to overseas markets over the past decades," he said.