China’s No. 1 Village, Huaxi Village, Comes to an End

Everyone owns a large villa, but only has the right to use it. Their salaries are used to pay off the villa costs (which is essentially long-term leasing), and they can't be used for trading or buying/selling. Only 20% of each month’s salary is paid out in cash; the rest goes toward paying for the villa or investing in businesses. In other words, people don’t have much extra discretionary income. Furthermore, private entrepreneurship is not allowed. The only commercial enterprises in the village besides the collective village economy are those run by outsiders. If someone in the family gets seriously ill and needs a large sum of money, they can't come up with it themselves and must submit a report to request assistance from the collective.

From this perspective, Huaxi Village can be considered true communism. In the early stages, the village secretary's exceptional leadership skills gathered the entire village's economy into collectively run enterprises, bringing prosperity to the community. But after that, successive leaders lacked comparable ability, and various contradictions eventually surfaced. The village experienced an outflow of residents, and the performance of village enterprises declined. Eventually, Huaxi Village's collective assets were sold to the local state-owned assets office at a share price of just 1 yuan.

From “Hundred-Million Village” to “One-Yuan Village”: A Visit to See What Happened to Huaxi Village