In the vibrant May, Lishui City, located in the mountainous area of southwestern Zhejiang Province, welcomed a group of special guests - the Provincial paired assistance teams. They searched and formulated specific support measures according to the list of assistance needs in the industrial economy and other aspects of each county and city.

In the past five years, 9 provincial paired assistance teams have coordinated to help 9 counties (cities and districts) in Lishui, integrated resources to promote the implementation of major projects, public services, industrial policies, etc., raising a total of 12.7 billion yuan, implementing 769 assistance projects, and the amount of consumption assistance procurement reached 710 million yuan. The scale of funds, coverage, cross-level collaboration, etc. have reached a record high, and helped Liandu District “come out” from the list of mountainous counties in the province.

The breeze blows, and the beautiful mountains and water are full of vitality. In recent years, the whole city of Lishui has faithfully practiced General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important instructions to Lishui. With the concern of the provincial party committee, the provincial government and the support of the brother city, it has strived to do the “the spirit of Lishui’s dedicated endeavors” and played the strongest tone of “striving with diligence, take charge and strive for excellence”, focusing on the three strategies of building a new growth pole, promoting common prosperity, and building a large garden. The task is to accelerate the promotion of “strengthening cities, revitating villages and integrating both”, and create a new situation of leapfrog high-quality development.

Today, the level of economic and social development of Lishui City has been at the forefront of the key cities in the old revolutionary areas of the country. The growth rate of the “three incomes” of urban residents, rural residents and low-income farmers all ranks first in the province. Among them, the growth rate of income of rural residents and low-income farmers is “16 consecutive” and “9 consecutive championships” in the province. The quality of the city’s air and water environment continues to be at the forefront of the country, and the ecological environment status index has led the province for 20 consecutive years.

Green Power Bursts Out Magnificently

Once upon a time, problems such as poor endogenous motivation, poor layout of development space, and poor overall competitive advantage became constraints on the high-quality development of Lishui. To make up for the shortcomings, we must establish the development idea of “integration, coordination and differentiation”.

Under the guidance of the “Eight-Eight Strategy”, successive municipal party committees and municipal governments in Lishui have taken “leapfrog development” as the main theme of the work, united and led the people of the city to innovate and practice the concept of “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”, and explored the path of high-quality green development.

In the past days, at the site of the Zhejiang Fulede Sensing Technology Project in Lishui Jingkai District, the construction has entered the final stage and is about to be completed and put into production. This is the second 10-billion-level manufacturing project introduced by Lishui, and it is also a landmark project of Lishui’s characteristic semiconductor Ten-Thousand-Mu Trillion-Yuan New Industrial Platform with key materials as the core.

In recent years, Lishui has cultivated a characteristic semiconductor industry cluster with key materials as the core. In the past five years, it has introduced 91 landing semiconductor projects with a total investment of more than 80 billion yuan, successfully cultivating the second semiconductor industry chain in the province.

Based on the greatest advantages of ecology, Lishui has accelerated the reshaping of the modern ecological economic system with regional characteristics, and promoted the development of the leading industries of the five major ecological industries with key materials as the core, precision manufacturing, health medicine, fashion industry and digital economy. The boom of high-quality green development is surging in southwestern Zhejiang.

The listed company Sichuan Kelun Pharmaceutical is looking at the development potential of Lishui. Five years ago, it acquired a pharmaceutical company in Longquan City, which has developed rapidly and achieved outstanding performance. In July 2024, Koren Pharmaceutical invested 2 billion yuan again to build high-end pharmaceutical preparations and health food projects in Longquan. As a representative project of the new quality productivity of Coron Pharmaceutical, the annual output value of the project will reach 4 billion yuan after production.

Relying on well ecological environment and natural resources, Lishui promotes the integration and development of the whole chain of traditional Chinese medicine health industry. By nurturing large enterprises, building large platforms, and creating large single products, it strengthens the second production belt and promotes the third production, and cultivates and expands the 10 billion-level industrial cluster of traditional Chinese medicine health. At present, there are 57 regulated enterprises in the city, including 17 “billion yuan enterprises”.

Born by the mountain, walk towards the sea. As an important practice of the “Eight-Eight Strategy”, the Shanhai Collaborative Project has injected strong impetus into the leapfrog high-quality development of Lishui.

At present, Lishui has established municipal pairing relations with Ningbo City, Jiaxing City and Huzhou City; 9 counties (cities and districts), Lishui Jingkai District and 24 economically strong counties and 5 development zones of 7 cities in the province have been fully covered, realizing the comprehensive pairing of key townships, schools and hospitals. In 2022, Ningbo and Lishui will superimpose the cooperative relationship of key cities in the old revolutionary areas on the basis of the original mountain and sea cooperation relationship, and make greater efforts to promote the construction of the first demonstration zone of common prosperity in the old revolutionary areas.

From 2021 to 2024, the provincial paired assistance teams has helped a total of 41 projects with a capital of 4.2 billion yuan, and the procurement of agricultural and sideline products for consumption assistance is 138 million yuan. In the gratitude and hard work, Jinyun also handed in a brilliant report card: farmers’ income has increased by more than 8% for 16 consecutive years, and the income gap between urban and rural residents has narrowed to 1.85, and has been selected as one of the top 100 national tourism counties for 6 consecutive years.

Collaborative co-construction, platform support. In recent years, the exchange and cooperation mechanism between Lishui and the cooperative places has been continuously deepened, and cooperation agreements covering science and technology, talents, culture and tourism, finance, industry and other key fields have been continuously signed, forming a new model of project co-construction of investment attraction, fund co-investment, industrial chain co-education, project co-management and benefit sharing, so as to narrow the geographical development with stronger synergy, balance the gap.

In the province’s first Shanhai collaborative “industrial enclave” incubator, Lishui Yonglian Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park, 353 enterprises such as intelligent manufacturing, digital economy and biomedicine have been introduced so far, attracting more than 3 billion yuan in investment, making it one of the “national” science and technology enterprise incubators. In the “industrial enclave” of Nantaihu-Qingyuan, the honeycomb energy-powered lithium-ion battery project with an investment of 12.6 billion yuan was introduced, allowing the 10 billion project to “fly into” the industrial platform.

“Science and technology innovation” has become a distinctive label of “industrial enclave”. Hangzhou Lishui Digital Building, the first “Science and Technology Innovation Enclave” in Lishui, has become a “bridgehead” for the introduction of high-end talents, industrial upgrading and industrial incubation, and has achieved “project incubation in Hangzhou and achievement transformation in Lishui”. The Yiwu Liandu Building, which was completed in June 2024 with a total investment of about 1.3 billion yuan, has attracted more than 80 science and technology and commercial service enterprises.

Driven by innovation and rejuvenate. At the end of April 2025, Unit 3 of Jinyun Pumped Storage Power Station, the largest pumped storage power station in southwestern Zhejiang, was successfully put into operation. The construction of the first phase of the steel pipe project with an annual output of 60,000 tons of Huadi Special Materials (Songyang) Co., Ltd., a major provincial industrial project, will usher in trial production in October 2025. The construction of the “Sanjiangkou” coordinated development zone has been solved, and industrial projects such as the Digital Intelligence Economic Industrial Park, the Hanerxi Headquarters Base, and the Southwest Zhejiang Telecommunications Power Center have accelerated the implementation.

Large projects are constantly emerging, new factories are emerging, and production lines are completed and put into production... The construction of major projects in the state is steadily, and the characteristic industries are growing.

The Pace of Fumin Qiang Village is Resonant

High-quality development to build a common prosperity demonstration zone is the core task assigned to Zhejiang by the central government, and the key difficulty is in Lishui.

Lishui deeply understands the mission and responsibility of the “main battlefield”. Focusing on the goal of “strengthening the city, building villages and integrating”, it benchmarks the important deployment of the “4+1” of the provincial party committee, builds a sustainable income increase mechanism oriented by common prosperity, focuses on the precise implementation of the action plan of “expanding the middle” and “lowering” of ten groups, and narrows the “three major gaps” with the “ten million projects” to drive the development of urban-rural integration.

In early summer, when walking into the rice fields in Zhaitan Township, Songyang County, the rice seedlings were neat and green. Under the guidance of the provincial science and technology envoy, Zhaitan Township has opened up a new path for ecological agriculture with the model of “rice ear rotation” and “rice frog symbiosis”, with an average mu income of more than 20,000 yuan. At the same time, by creating more than 10 characteristic ecological agricultural products such as “rice, rice ear, rice frog, rice shrimp, rice crab, rice loach”, more than 100 jobs have been provided for farmers and brought nearly 220,000 yuan in operating income to the village collective.

The construction of a common prosperity demonstration zone cannot be separated from the care of the provincial party committee and the provincial government and the help of brother cities and counties. Pinghu City and Qingtian County have expanded the scope of cooperation and adopted the “fixed income” method to drive the collective economic development of 321 economically weak villages in Qingtian County, and achieved a “high return” of more than 35 million yuan per year.

Land and sea linkage, mountains and sea symphony. Since 2018, Lishui has increased cooperation and exchanges with Jiaxing, Pinghu, Shaoxing, Shengzhou and other places. Nine counties (cities and districts) have successively built a number of cross-county, cross-provincial and cross-county “thinning enclaves”, creating a path of blood-making help, two-way interaction and win-win cooperation, and playing the “Mountain and Sea” Concerto.

Hematopoietic is enhanced, and the common wealth is strong. Taking advantage of the opportunity of being selected as the first batch of pilot lists in the field of narrowing the regional gap in the province’s high-quality development construction and common prosperity demonstration zone in 2021, Lishui carried out the action of stabilizing employment and benefiting people’s livelihood, and the action of improving the ability of 100,000 skilled talents to jointly enrich, etc., to promote the construction of a leapfrog high-quality development construction and common prosperity demonstration zone.

By holding beach music festivals, volleyball games, etc., and developing the farmhouse homestay industry, Changting Village, Shitang Town, Yunhe County, quickly became a famous “Internet celebrity village”. Changting Village was originally a lonely village by the Ou River. Since 2016, the village, relying on the hydrolographic advantages of the Ou River, has transformed the wasteland into the only thousand-mile artificial beach in southwestern Zhejiang, spreading sea sand and planting palm trees, creating a characteristic landscape of “seeing the sea in the mountains”. In the past five years, the village has received an average of more than 300,000 tourists every year, with a tourism income of 4.5 million yuan. The village’s collective economic income has jumped from almost “empty shell” to 2.06 million yuan, and the per capita annual income of villagers has reached 35,000 yuan.

Industry is the core foundation for a strong village. Aiming at the goal of industrial chain cultivation and quality agricultural development, Lishui has continuously come up with practical new tricks.

In 2023, Lishui launched a three-year action plan for the construction of the whole industry chain of quality agriculture, promoting the continuous growth of the whole industrial chain of tea, edible fungi, traditional Chinese medicinal materials, animal husbandry, bamboo shoots and oil. Among them, the whole industrial chain of 10 billion-level “local specialties” increased to four. In addition to tea, the output value of three single chains of edible fungi, animal husbandry and bamboo shoots broke for the first time. Ten billion yuan. According to the incomplete statistics of the municipal agricultural and rural departments, the number of employees in the whole industrial chain in the city is 505,100, and the annual per capita income is 36,600 yuan.

The chain of ten billion industries has been upgraded rapidly due to the injection of science and technology. Through supercritical extraction, low-temperature freeze-drying and other technologies, we have increased the utilization rate of summer and autumn tea by 60%, and the added value per ton of tea has increased by 5 times. In the workshop of Zhejiang Mingye Plant Technology Co., Ltd. in Bihu Town, Liandu District, Ye Lilong, the head of the enterprise, guided the workers to debug the production equipment. He said that the total investment of this project is 350 million yuan, and six new production lines such as instant tea and matcha will be built. After it is officially put into production in the second half of 2025, the annual output value can reach 500 million yuan, providing new tea raw materials for more than a thousand food enterprises around the world.

To enrich the village and narrow the gap, make the common wealth more complete and the background color brighter. From 2020 to 2024, the average annual growth of per capita disposable income of rural residents in Lishui was 8.7%, and the average annual growth rate of per capita disposable income of low-income farmers was 14.7%. In 2024, the per capita disposable income of all residents in the city exceeded 50,000 yuan, and the income of residents in all counties (cities and districts) exceeded the national average, and the income gap between urban and rural residents in the city narrowed from 2.05 to 1.87.

At the beginning of 2025, the Municipal Party Committee issued the “Action Plan for Sustainable and Stable Growth of Farmers’ Income” in Document No. 1, which listed it as the “key matter” of the three-year breakthrough action of leapfrog high-quality development, further consolidating the foundation and moving towards a new journey of common prosperity.

While the ability to increase income and get rich in rural areas is improving, the living environment and village appearance are also improving rapidly. Since 2024, Suichang and Songyang have become the first batch of three pilot counties in the province. Liandu Yantou Village, Yunhe Changting Village and Jingning Daqi Village have become the first batch of Golden 3A scenic spots in the province. Longquan Xitou Village has been selected as the world's best tourist village...

Reform Paints a Picture of Happiness

Reform and innovation are the only way and the key move for mountainous areas to catch up and leapfrog. In recent years, starting from the actual needs of promoting development, Lishui has self-pressured, “finding ways in exploration, seeking breakthroughs in adapting, and promoting development in innovation”.

Focusing on the pain points and bottlenecks, a series of reform measures were born. In 2024, Lishui has launched the “1410” reform attack action, jointly promoted 14 provincial offensive reforms and 10 local key reforms, and implemented 26 “national character” pilot projects and 50 “large scene · small incision” characteristic reforms. Promoting the integrated reform of basic public services in mountainous areas has been selected as a case of comprehensive urban reform in China’s 2024.

Committed to “making Lishui the best place to start a business”, Lishui optimizes and improves the business environment with the value-added reform of government services, and implements ten practical mechanisms to help enterprises. 15 reforms related to the business environment have been selected as provincial best practice cases.

Development is the first priority, and talent is the first resource. Lishui has built an innovative ecological chain of “industrial positioning science and technology, science and technology indexing talents, talents relying on education, and education empowering industries”, and promoting the integrated reform of “education and science and people” to empower the development of new quality productive forces. The “Teaching and Science and People” Integration Committee of the Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Productivity and Investment Promotion Center were newly established, policies such as “Teaching and Science and People” integrated empowering industries and supporting the high-quality development of universities in Li, innovating the “sharing talents” mechanism, building a science and technology innovation industrial park in southwestern Zhejiang, and promoting the number of national high-tech enterprises to exceed 1,000.

If the youth is prosperous, the country will be prosperous. Lishui has comprehensively and deeply grasped the construction of youth-oriented cities, and launched a series of measures such as “Youth Development Unit”, “Digital Nomads Living and Co-creation”, “Youth Living and Happy Career Plan” and “Youth Shop Plan” with reform and innovative thinking, so as to build a bigger stage and a better environment for youth growth and progress, entrepreneurship and innovation.

In 2024, Lishui planned to hold a national invitational competition for the operation of digital nomad communities, attracting 41 teams from all over the country to participate in the competition, promoting the cooperative operation of the participating teams with 6 bases such as Liandu Guyan Painting Township and Jinyun Xinxikeng Village, attracting more than 400 digital nomads and landing 11 youth entrepreneurship projects.

The city provides space for development for young people, and young people have also fed Lishui and opened up their lives. Qingtian Ye Xinrui innovated the ecological cattle breeding model, leading the villagers to cross the “cow” to get rich together; Li Binsheng, the new head of “Saw Lihuang”, joined hands with young entrepreneurs to help the Yunyun machine tool town to break the cocoon and become a butterfly; the “Internet celebrity youth” represented by “Wufan” played with mobile phones “new agricultural tools” and promoted the integrated development of agriculture, culture and tourism. ... The city of young talents and vitality “runs in both directions” and moves hand in hand.

Public services in mountainous areas are difficult in remote villages. In April 2024, Lishui issued and implemented the “Implementation Plan for Promoting the Cross-Mountain Overall Integration Reform of Public Services in Mountainous Areas in Lishui City”, establishing a “six integration” working pattern in the eight public services fields of childcare, education, health, employment, culture, sports, old-age care and assistance to the disabled, and promote the expansion of public services to improve quality and reduce costs, increase efficiency.

“Reduce the development gap between urban and rural areas and realize the sharing of high-quality public services”. Huangcun, Yaxi Town, Liandu District, which is more than 40 minutes' drive from the city, is fully reflected. On a fixed date, the villagers went out of their homes one after another, waiting for the mobile supply and sales truck full of daily necessities to drive into the village to participate in a convenient and smooth buying and sale gathering.

At regular times, there are also “mobile convenient people’s common rich cars” with different functions such as “smart mobile hospital” and “mobile dining car” directly to the village. Today, Lishui has initially explored the formation of a “fixed + mobile” accurate service supply model, integrated and built a total of 1,480 mobile convenient vehicles, achieved full coverage of administrative villages, and provided more than 30 million services throughout the year. The “Smart Mobile Hospital” has a total of 33,700 medical visits and 1.53 million kilometers.

The integrated mechanism of urban and rural water supply combined with construction and management, “one village does not fall, one person has many”, realized homogeneous drinking water in urban and rural areas; deepened the construction of the national inclusive financial services rural revitalization reform pilot zone, and won the central financial support for three consecutive years; “two small” entrepreneurship has won the National Financial Technology Innovation Award... A series of reform measures have woven a “happiness net” covering mountainous areas.

Promote high-quality development, faith is like a torch, and struggle is endless. Today’s Lishui, with the kind care of the provincial party committee and the provincial government, and with the strong support of provincial departments and sister cities in the province, is confidently stepping on a new journey towards the high-quality development of mountainous areas!