Ripe watermelons in Shuanglong village, Hai'an attract foreign merchants. [Photo/ntfabu.com]

Watermelons from Shuanglong village in Hai'an, a county-level city in Nantong, East China's Jiangsu province, have hit the market, attracting many foreign merchants.

Shuanglong village is a traditional agricultural village with weak secondary and tertiary industries. Zhao Hua, who has acted as the village's general Party branch secretary for the past 15 years, has been doing his best to lead the village to prosperity.

The village's farmland is mainly for planting rice and wheat, generating little economic value and tying up a large number of laborers. To solve this problem, Zhao mobilized the masses to transfer their land. He visited a watermelon planting base in Dongtai, a county-level city administered by Yancheng in Jiangsu, many times to discuss matters concerning land transfers with local growers last year.

The breakthrough came when Wu Lishan, a local watermelon grower, agreed to transfer 20 hectares of land for growing watermelons.

After the land was transferred, part of the labor force in the village was freed up to work on the watermelon plantation for a higher daily wage of 150-300 yuan ($23.2-46.4).

Zhao said he believed that to solve the employment problem of a surplus rural labor force, it is necessary to bring in industrial enterprises to create more jobs.

Over the years, Zhao Hua has encouraged people who grew up there to return home and start businesses. Fu Jinming returned to Shuanglong village and founded a textile company after retiring from the army. It now pays over 600,000 yuan in annual taxes and provides more than 160 jobs for local farmers.

The village also attracted a large project worth 100 million yuan, which has already broken ground and started preliminary infrastructure construction.