The lifestyle impresses almost as much as the hard statistics. “The income from growing citrus is ten times that from growing grain crops. Since orchard tending is not heavy work many young and middle-aged farmers go out to make money elsewhere,” said Yang Renbin, secretary of the CPC Tujing Township Committee of Zhongxian County. Even at this easy pace, Zhong-xian’s annual processing capacity of citrus exceeds 100,000 tons. More than 13,000 hectares of citrus orchards have been planted and cultivated, benefiting 150,000 fruit-growers, and more than 10,000 people relocated from the submerged reservoir area. Orange trees around the county seat have formed the largest citrus orchard in the reservoir area. The largest industrialized container seedling nursery in the world has been built with an annual production capacity of 2.5 million seedlings.

The lifeblood of Zhongxian is exported to Japan and several Southeast Asian countries. The goal is to create the “Citrus City of China,” and Zhu Xiyan holds that moving forward, Zhongxian County will accelerate the pace of attracting investment into farmland – the marriage of urban capital and enterprise capital.

World-class Reservoir Economy

An industrialization chain is forming in Zhongxian and other counties in the reservoir area, including variety breeding, seedling nurseries, research and development, juice processing, and product marketing. The transference of the citrus base’s contractual and operational rights take multiple forms, such as leasing, subcontracting, assigning, and shareholding.

China is the second largest citrus producer in the world, and citrus has become the champion among fruit industries in increasing the income of farmers in the reservoir area. More than 1 million people are engaged in this trade. Xia Zuxiang, director of the Chongqing Municipal Agricultural Commission, said that in 2008, his municipality’s orange orchards totaled 120,000 hectares, and the fruit crop was 1.25 million tons, making up 6 percent of the total output of the country.

“Led by ten counties or districts such as Zhongxian, Wanzhou and Fengjie, it is predicted that by 2012 Chongqing’s orange groves will exceed 170,000 hectares, with an annual output of 2 million tons, including 1 million tons of late-ripening varieties. Orange juice processing will consume 1 million tons of the fruit. By 2015, Chongqing is hopeful to become the country’s largest export base for late-ripening oranges and orange juice,” said Xia Zuxiang.

Chongqing has a number of national citrus scientific research and teaching institutes such as the Citrus Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Southwest University, and National Citrus Virus Exclusion Center. Concentration of talent is a powerful guarantee for advancement of the citrus industry.

“Zhongxian’s success mirrors the economic and social development of the rest of the Chongqing Reservoir Area in the first decade of the Western Development Drive,” said an official of the Chongqing Municipal Migration Bureau. In 2008, when the global economy slowed down, the reservoir area’s economic growth reached 16 percent. Its scalable agriculture based on five characteristic products – oranges, pickles, Chinese prickly ash, lean-pork pigs, and medicinal herbs – has taken shape. Annual GDP growth averaged 11.9 percent, 2.4 percent higher than the national average. The reservoir area’s industrial structure has been improved: the proportion of non-agricultural industry has increased from 70.9 percent in 1999 to current 84.8 percent.

Economic growth has raised the living standards of relocated people. Today, the per capita net income of rural migrants is recorded at RMB 4,538, and the per capita disposable income of urban migrants at RMB 7,383; each family’s housing allotment has increased more than 10 square meters since relocation.