Action takes village to a new level

Hu Diefei and Tom Qian
The environment of Zhaoxiang Village in Anting Town has been greatly improved since the village committee took action over illegal structures and group renting in 2013.
With an increasing number of migrant workers, a great many local residents in the village had built illegal rooms or kitchens.
“We found that a lot of problems were connected with housing, so we explored ways to strengthen social governance by providing a series of services to solve the issue since the second half of 2013,” Xu Jiaying, deputy Party secretary of the village, said.
“Now I don’t have to worry about anything. All I have to do is to collect the rent,” villager Tang Linjuan said. She assigned her extra houses to the village committee in 2014. 
In her courtyard, charging facilities, extinguishers, a brand-new kitchen and smoke detectors have been installed. 
As more villagers like Tang assigned the village committee to manage their extra houses, the committee set up a company to be responsible for renting and property management. 
Since then, 150 households in the village have joined the program with 122 houses decorated for 600 families from outside the village. Illegal structures have been dismantled, and the committee contacted industrial park operators nearby for renters. 
The company hired cleaning, repairing and security personnel to provide 24-hour services. 
“I have also rented a house in the countryside beforehand, but living here I feel so different. It feels like living in an urban community,” said Cui Huafang who has been renting houses in Zhaoxiang for two years.
Up to now, Zhaoxiang has banned 20 unlicensed business households, demolished 1,320 square meters of illegal buildings, eliminated eight fire safety hazards, eight public environmental pollution sources and 38 group renting cases.
Last year, Zhaoxiang Village was successfully established as one of the first batch of waste sorting demonstration areas in Jiading.
With joint efforts, the economy of the village leaped to a new level with the annual disposable income increasing from 3 million yuan (US$440,000) in 2010 to 15 million yuan last year.