(Ecns.cn)--Home to replicas of seven of the world's most famous structures, including the Statue of Liberty, the Arc de Triomphe, the Great Wall, the Tian'anmen Rostrum and the Sydney Opera House, Huaxi Village has transformed from a poor farming community to a multibillion-dollar conglomerate with interests in steel, shipping, tobacco and textiles. It owes it all to one man--Wu Renbao.
By turns a communist dictator, capitalist entrepreneur and self-help guru, the 84-year-old is among China's most colorful characters, commented Jonathan Watts, a correspondent for the Guardian.
"He is praised for turning Huaxi into one of the richest villages in China and enriching the original residents with annual shares, dividends and free overseas trips. He is also criticized for turning the community into a family fiefdom, in which workers get no holidays and his relatives get the best posts," Watts explained.
With only three years of education, Wu never thought he would achieve such considerable success.
"Practice is my real teacher," he pointed out. "I was a listener in the 1950s, a fighter in the '60s, and a workaholic in the '70s."
Born to a poor family, Wu was a hired hand for a local landlord before he turned 14. "I had to graze cattle and take care of the landlord's paralytic son, for which I was paid 20 kilos of rice every year," he recalled.
As an adult, Wu tried to join the "War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea" in the early 1950s and dedicate himself to serving the motherland, but was turned down due to arthritis. He then worked as a military backup with all his energy.
For such exemplary behavior, Wu was appointed head of Hudai Township, the predecessor to Huaxi Village. In 1961, Wu annexed Huaxi from Hudai and started his decade-long governance.
From the very beginning, Wu tried to be unique and practical. "Though the Household Contract Responsibility System, which allows farming households to manage agricultural production on their own initiatives while the farmland remains in the ownership of the rural collective, has been applied across the whole nation, I still wanted to be realistic and put most of the young laborers in businesses and the old farmers in the fields," Wu once said.
Huaxi soon shifted its focus to developing industry. In 1992, when late leader Deng Xiaoping paid a visit to a few southern cities and urged the Chinese to further emancipate their minds, be bolder and develop faster in conducting reform and opening up to the outside world, Wu took out 10-million-yuan loan to buy aluminum ingots.
In 1999, Huaxi Village went public on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, becoming a highly sought-after stock by investors.
The original area of Huaxi Village was only for 0.96 square kilometers with a population of about 2,000. Yet the poor southern village that has now become the "Huaxi Village Group," owning over 60 enterprises in steelmaking, textiles and shipping, and earning an after-tax profit of 3 billion yuan a year.
