Shenzhen village's business investments are paying off

"From startups to cultivating land, our village has got rid of poverty and now is on a road of common prosperity," Zhang Yubiao, party chief of Nanling village, said proudly.

The village's story is well-known in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. It used to be one of the city's poorest villages, but now its collective fixed assets have reached 3.5 billion yuan ($500 million), and the average annual per capita income is about 150,000 yuan, three times Shenzhen's average.

But Zhang said Nanling's path to success was not smooth, and it was the spirit of indomitable will and perseverance passed down through generations that kept the village moving forward.

"Nanling" in Chinese means "southern mountains", and true to its name it is located in a mountainous area of Shenzhen, so transportation was very inconvenient.

In the beginning of the nation's reform and opening-up in the early 1980s, villagers spontaneously formed a road paving team to improve transportation and persuade manufacturers to set up factories.

In 1982, Nanling reached a turning point when the city government offered villagers about 400,000 yuan for some of their idle land.

Instead of enriching themselves, they decided to use the money to improve fundamental infrastructure on the rest of their land to lure manufacturers.

Since then, hundreds of millions of yuan have been poured into building factories and supporting facilities, covering an area of more than 1 million square meters. The village also started to rake in increasing revenues from rent.

As a result, the village community brought in over 50 manufacturers, including ZTE, and investment of more than 1 billion yuan.

By 2000, Zhang realized the landlord business model was not sustainable and suggested the community find a new one.

"The cost of such a transition was high," he said. "For instance, we created a jewelry industrial zone, and we had to ask the tenants to move out two years before the contract deadline, leading to a loss of 18 million yuan."

That zone was later turned into a "cultural and creative town", a complex integrating modern office space, tourism, cultural and education sectors.

As a result of the bold transformation, Nanling's revenue doubled and the community's collective income increased by 2.6 percent in 2019.

More importantly, the village community brought in selected startups as investment targets. Zhang said they have set up a fund of 300 million yuan to focus on emerging industries, such as life sciences, 5G telecommunication, chip design and artificial intelligence.

The village community collectively decides the amount of their assets assigned to the fund, and a professional management team is responsible for management.

He is confident that this year, the village could see one or two of their invested firms get listed on the nation's stock markets.

"To ring the bell at a stock exchange with my fellow villagers has been a dream for me, and now it is about to come true," Zhang said.