In order to develop organization and communication skills, the school encourages students to compete for school posts. Every Friday, classes take turns to give performances, and the school as a whole prepares six performances each year. This year students produced two performances in memory of the centenary of the 1911 Revolution, which were enjoyed by audiences in Zhongshan City. To widen the students’ horizons, every month experts are invited to make lectures on subjects ranging from astronomy and geography to social sciences and business, which always draw big crowds.

“Our graduates are welcomed by universities for their open-mindedness, good organization and communication skills, and their overall qualities.” He Youlin added, “Our orienteering teams have represented the country in many youth competitions. And the school has fostered more than 300 athletes for the country.” It is also famed for its teaching excellence, and its students have won many awards for mathematics, physics, chemistry, and scientific inventions.

In another effort to help its youngsters develop a picture of the wider world, the school plans to build a planetarium, rare in any secondary school at home and abroad. It will allow the students to explore the space and discover its secrets.

The People’s Livelihood in Shaxi

The Three Principles of the People (nationalism, democracy and people’s livelihood) is a cornerstone of Sun Yat-sen’s philosophy of nation building. His hometown Zhongshan is among the first in China to explore a human-centered and sustainable economic growth model.  

In the early years of reform and opening-up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Zhongshan entered into enthusiastic development projects without any holistic and long-term planning. People rushed to industrial projects regardless of what they were and the result was wasted resources, low profits, and all sorts of environmental damage.

Decades earlier, however, Sun Yat-sen had proposed that the national economy must be wisely structured and planned as a whole. With this concept in mind, the people of Zhongshan came up with the strategy of setting up one or two main industries in each town and building up an integrated industrial structure for the city.

Shaxi Town thrived with textile industry back in the 1930s, so naturally it put all its weight on this sector after the nation resumed market economy. At first all the orders local factories handled were processing with imported materials and given samples, which left a paper-thin profit margin for the manufacturers. Gradually the town began to produce garments of its own designs and brand names, and built its reputation in the casual wear sector.

In 2000, there came the turning point for Shaxi. In this year, the China Casual Wear Exposition, cosponsored by the China National Textile And Apparel Council (CNTAC) and the municipal government of Zhongshan, was held in the town. Among the 10 award-winning brands, seven were from Shaxi. Shaxi casual wear has become the bellwether of the clothing industry.

Today the clothing industry makes up 80 percent of the local economy. Last year gross industrial production reached a value of RMB 22.2 billion, 18 billion of which was clothing, and US $ 280 million worth of garments were exported.

But the clothing industry in Shaxi hasn’t been without problems and has faced its own tests, the worst of which have been the Asian financial crisis at the end of last century and the present global economic meltdown. They led to the fall of international demand and consequently plummeting revenues, which drove less competent players to closure. Every year 300 to 400 operations in the town went bankrupt, but meanwhile about the same number of start-ups were created, sustaining the vitality of the industry. The smaller weaker businesses were filtered out under the work of market forces, but the strong ones survived and expanded. With stable clients and large-scale production, they have been able to strengthen their reputation and win more contracts.

 According to Peng Cansen, chief of the Economy and Trade Department of Shaxi government, the town has made a lot of effort to promote the casual wear business. It opens new financing channels for medium and small-sized companies and encourages banks to grant them commercial loans. RMB 10 million is earmarked every year to fund innovations in local companies to help them build development and research muscles and a technological edge. The town also employs policies to protect labor rights and benefits. For instance, the town is trying to reduce the risks faced by employees if their company goes bankrupt, requiring business owners to make a deposit of up to RMB 100,000, which will be used to cover late pays in case of closures. Shaxi has become the most prominent casual wear base in China, with more than 2,000 clothing companies.

“The clothing industry in Shaxi is not yet well established,” said Peng. “There are only 156 companies with annual sales above RMB 20 million, most of which are private. Of them 20 exceed RMB 100 million annual production value, and merely five exceed RMB 500 million. We still have a lot of space to improve.”