Zhongxian County, with its population of 900,000, supplied 1,000 tons of fresh citrus juice to the market in 2009. Still, the supply falls short of demand. Following the fertility period of the fruit trees, orange juice is shipped to two collection depots in downtown Chongqing: one at No. 1 Bridge in Yuzhong District, and the other at Three Gorges Square in Shapingba.

As early as 1997, people in Zhongxian began their cooperation with an international and advanced juice producer. In the winter of that year, American entrepreneur Mr. Edgar M. Bronfman Sr. came to Zhongxian. The president of Seagram Co., Ltd. heads up one of the top 500 companies in the world specializing in beverages and entertainment. Bronfman Sr. attended the foundation-laying ceremony of Seagram Tropicana’s Citrus Technical Center. This is the first large project from abroad to settle in the county and also the largest agricultural industrialization project of Chongqing Municipality.

Prior to that, the senior Bronfman had visited many places in China, but chose Zhongxian County as his fruit juice production and processing base, thinking it the best location for citrus orchards in Asia. Seagram invested US $11 million in construction of the citrus technical center here and set up a technical training function. The Chinese side is responsible for planting 4,000 hectares of orchard, and the two investor bodies jointly built processing capacity for 300,000 tons of non-concentrated fresh juice annually.

This project has aroused the interest of Tung Chee Hwa, vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference when he was visiting Chongqing, who hopes that “orange juice drinkers around the world can drink the products of Zhongxian.”

Largest Nursery, Largest Orchard

In 1997 the county of Zhongxian still suffered from an imbalance between industry and agriculture, its poverty-stricken tax base facing the onerous expense and task of relocation. The local revenue in 1997 only reached RMB 100 million, and the per capita net income of farmers was only RMB 1,456. The county seat of Zhongxian is 180 kilometers from downtown Chongqing. It took 12 hours to make the journey by car in those days, whereas the expressway has brought that down to two hours or so.

In the beginning, the leaders of Zhongxian County were not sure whether it made sense to encourage relocated farmers to plant orange groves. Modern, scalable and intensified production applied to agriculture clashed fiercely with the traditional mode of a dispersed, household-based operation. Nevertheless, following the introduction of the Beijing Huiyuan Group and American Bronfman Citrus Co., Ltd. into Zhongxian, fresh juice shipped to large cities fetched a high price of RMB 32 per carton. Seeing the high profit, farmers fell over one another applying for citrus licenses.

“Zhongxian County has a special environment. Any development strategy should take into consideration the Three Gorges Reservoir,” said Zhu Xiyan, secretary of the CPC Zhongxian County Committee. “We often talk about the Western Development Drive. It involves two aspects: tangible and intangible. The latter refers to the exploration of our minds,” Zhu added. Leaders of Zhong-xian County put forward the creative idea of “building a city shaded by citrus groves,” making the humble orange the mascot of the county, much as it is in the state of Florida.

“Every part of an orange yields treasure,” said Zhu Xiyan, “even its skin is material for extracting essence.” Magistrate Liu Guizhong reveals that since the implementation of the Western Development Strategy, the county has introduced leading enterprises. Citrus trees grow on land below the line of 600 meters above sea level. On the land above the line of 600 meters, tea-oil trees are planted.