OVER a period of 20 years, farmers in Guzhu Village have experienced a complete transformation of their lives, from eking out a living by selling tea and bamboo shoots to hosting tourists — mostly urbanites attracted by the local landscape.

At present, there are about 500 inns of all kinds in the village, in Changxing County, Zhejiang Province. Each year, it receives about 4 million tourists, 65 percent of whom come from the metropolis of Shanghai.

“Rural tourism has indeed made villagers rich,” said Zhang Mingxiang, Party chief of the village. An inn can earn 300,000 yuan (US$46,900) to 1 million yuan a year in this village.

The central authorities last week issued a guideline on building the coastal Zhejiang Province into a demonstration zone for achieving common prosperity.

The guideline includes multiple measures to guide the province in setting an example for promoting common prosperity.

By 2025, Zhejiang should achieve solid progress in building the demonstration zone, with its per capita gross domestic product (GDP) reaching the level of moderately developed economies, while a social structure with a middle-income population as the majority should be generally developed by then, the document said.

New reforms will be mulled over and advanced in such fields as scientific and technological innovation, digitalization, distribution systems, coordinated development between urban and rural areas and between different regions, public services, and value realization of ecological products, said Yuan Jiajun, Party secretary of Zhejiang, explaining how to achieve common prosperity through institutional innovation.

(Xinhua)