As the old Chinese saying goes, it's easy to enjoy life after going from rags to riches, but not so easy to change from being a have to a have-not.

But such adages have never stood in the way of 44-year-old former PLA major Jia Dongliang.

After being demobilized from the air force, Jia turned down the option to move into government, choosing instead to become a pig farmer in Guangning in Guangdong Province.

Now the owner of a large farm, Jia is also head of a grassroots Party organization comprising mostly ex-servicemen who share his goals for agricultural development.

"Our organization is like a rural association. We want to formulate a platform that can help the farmers, teach them how to use new technologies and bring them wealth," Jia said in a group interview on the sidelines of the ongoing CPC congress.

But Jia is not the only CPC member devoted to such development of the Party at grassroots level. At the end of last year there were about 3.5 million such organizations across the country, most in rural areas and neighborhood communities.

Fan Zhenxi, a village-level Party organization secretary from Hebei Province, said: "These grassroots organizations provide a foundation for the development of rural areas."

Fan, along with other local leaders, helped his village raise the value of its industrial output to 300 million yuan (US$40 million) last year, and boost villagers' annual per capita net income to 8,000 yuan, up from 360 yuan in 1987, when he was elected village-level Party organization secretary.

(China Daily October 20, 2007)