(Yicai) Oct. 17 -- Some villages in China’s Zhejiang province are trialing a professional manager system, attracting young people with business management experience to work as their chief executives. As a result, the economies of these villages have improved greatly.

Villages do not want for talent in government service, Wu Weiqiang, deputy head of Hangzhou’s Yuhang district, told Yicai. “But there is not enough young talent with a business mindset, and that is the main reason behind trying out the professional manager system,” he noted.

Yuhang has been piloting the village CEO system since 2019, recruiting in the public domain and offering a basic annual salary of CNY180,000 (USD24,600), of which 83 percent comes from the district’s own fiscal funds and the rest from the village that appoints the CEO. The CEOs can also get performance-related bonuses from the villages.

Three years ago, Yongan, a rice-producing village that is trialing the system, hired Liu Song, a non-local who worked in a large agricultural firm for almost 10 years, as its CEO. After Liu took the job, Yongan introduced digital production and management of its paddy fields in cooperation with e-commerce platforms and created its own rice brand, turbocharging sales. In addition, the team led by Liu promoted the village's rice farming culture, bringing in a lot of tourists.

Revenue from Yongan's rice output in core areas tripled to CNY6,000 (USD820) per ‘mu’ (0.067 hectares) in 2021 from CNY2,000 in 2019, with the village’s overall operating income soaring to CNY22.5 million (USD3.1 million) from CNY1.2 million (USD164,060). Meanwhile, the village’s average annual income rose to CNY56,920 (USD7,780) from CNY42,322.

The success of the pilot programs in Yuhang has encouraged the authorities to bring the system to other villages around the province. Last month, Zhejiang launched a training program for 1,000 village CEOs, Xu Jinhua, chairman of the Zhejiang Agricultural Society, one of the program’s organizers, told Yicai. The first 100 candidates to be selected will receive relatively systematic instruction to further enrich their knowledge and network resources, Xu noted.

“Although we’ve just started training the 100 potential village CEOs, people from all over the province have already been calling us to express their interest in hiring them,” said Jiang Wenlong, head of the Zhejiang Association for Promoting Rural, another of the program’s organizers.

The new CEO system has also caught the attention of other Chinese provinces, Jiang pointed out. “A lot of people have been coming here from Guangdong province to learn from our experience, and they often talk with us until the early hours,” he noted.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev