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Hundreds mourn head of China's 'reform cradle' village

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-11-09 08:50

HEFEI: Hundreds of farmers and officials mourned Sunday the Party chief of Xiaogang Village, famous for its reforms to grant rural families long-term contracts for land use in 1978.

Shen Hao, 45, died suddenly Friday in the village in east China's Anhui Province, after having devoted himself to the development of the village for six years. Shen had been an official with the provincial Finance Department before he started to serve the Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xiaogang Village Committee in 2004.

"Shen was too tired," said villager Yan Lihua. "He had been thinking about how to lead us to get rich all these years. Without him, Xiaogang Village wouldn't develop so fast."

Xiaogang has been known as the "Cradle of China's Rural Reform" since 1978 when villagers risked prison to adopt a household contract responsibility system, which entrusted the management and production of public owned farmland to individual households through long-term contracts.

The late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping described the system as "a great invention of Chinese farmers". The practice spread around the country.

In 2006, Shen decided to remain at the post on the request of villagers although he could return to the department after three years of work in rural areas.

The income per capita in the village tripled from 2004 to 2008, said Ma Zhanwen, Party chief of Fengyang County. "Thanks to Shen's efforts in the recent six years, Xiaogang villagers benefited the great improvement."