Aerial photo taken on Aug. 20, 2022 shows a future factory of Hangzhou Wahaha Group, a leading domestic beverage enterprise, in Wencheng County, east China's Zhejiang Province. (Xinhua)
HANGZHOU, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- Every morning after dropping her children off at school, Ye Yuya would walk 50 meters to a workshop, where dozens of mothers like her pedal sewing machines to supplement their income.
Ye comes from a low-income farming family in Sanmen County, east China's Zhejiang Province. During the farming off-season, she works for a "common prosperity workshop" weaving outdoor jackets for a local garment company.
"When my son and daughter attend school, I work here to help support the family. The workshop is near the school, so it is easy for me to pick up my children and take care of them after work," she said.
The workshop is located in the Haiyou sub-district of Sanmen, which is home to over 300 outdoor jacket companies that produce nearly 60 percent of the national total.
Outside of the factories that produce the bulk of the orders, the jacket companies have also opened over 180 "common prosperity workshops" to help more than 10,000 residents improve their income, said Pan Litai, president of the county's association for the outdoor jacket industry.
As the name implies, the workshops are the enterprises' response to the government's call to reduce the income gap and achieve "common prosperity for all." They are mostly opened in towns and villages to provide employment opportunities to the unemployed, low-income earners and farmers who wish to earn extra income during the off-season.
For instance, the workshop where Ye works employs 50 women and one man. It was proposed by the county's Party committee and receives rent subsidies from the government.
"The workshops allow low-income earners to work near homes. The flexible employment also helps companies ease their labor crunch and reduce employment costs," said Lou Mingrong, head of the workshop and an employee of a local garment company.
The growth of such workshops in Zhejiang, one of China's richest provinces, is noticeable. Official data suggest that by the end of June, Zhejiang had established 7,683 "common prosperity workshops," which employed 355,000 rural residents and increased their per capita monthly income by 2,600 yuan (about 356 U.S. dollars).
Since the era of reform and opening up, Zhejiang has long been known for its wealth and free-market entrepreneurship. However, it is less well known for being at the forefront of China's common prosperity drive, with one of the most balanced regional and urban-rural developments in the country.
Last year, Zhejiang continued to rank first among Chinese provincial-level regions in terms of disposable income of urban and rural residents, while the province's urban-rural income gap was among the lowest in the country.
In 2021, China's central authorities issued a guideline on transforming Zhejiang into a demonstration zone for achieving common prosperity. The province has been encouraged to develop a set of mechanisms, measures and evaluation systems to further close wealth gaps.
Among the key initiatives are a pairing-up mechanism, through which Zhejiang's 26 mountainous counties have received nearly 100 billion yuan in funds from their better-off peers over the past 20 years, as well as 12,438 industrial projects totaling 730.5 billion yuan in investment, according to official data.
The redistribution of resources within the province is now spreading to social areas. Since 2021, Zhejiang has asked five cities with better elderly care services to send 162 nursing workers to attend to more than 30,000 elderly people living on 15 remote islands.
"Teachers from other counties are giving online courses to our students, while local teachers hold interactive seminars in classrooms," said Fan Yanfei, deputy headmaster of a primary school in Zhoushan City, adding that the double-teacher mechanism comes in handy for many islands that have struggled with scarce educational resources.
The province of nearly 65 million people has set a goal of achieving common prosperity by 2035. According to a provincial government action plan, the proportion of families with an annual disposable income of 200,000 to 600,000 yuan should reach 45 percent by 2025.
Experts said Zhejiang is setting an example for other Chinese provinces that are striving to balance economic growth and a more equitable distribution of wealth.
Gao Peiyong, an economist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noted that common prosperity does not mean the establishment of an egalitarian or welfare state.
"In the coming years, developing the economy to 'make a bigger and better cake' remains a priority. On that basis we work to divide and distribute the cake properly," Gao said, highlighting the role of entrepreneurs and high-income earners in advancing the cause. ■
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