When Xixinan village in rural China went viral in 2023, its fairy-tale greenery drew crowds but also posed a dilemma: how to generate revenue without an entrance fee and how to share the benefits with neighboring villages rather than compete with them. The answer, as explored in the latest episode of People's Daily's video series Decoding Rural China's Governance, lies in a six-village tourism network that is turning online attention into a shared opportunity for rural development. The series, distributed via Media OutReach Newswire, highlights how grassroots governance can foster collaboration over competition.
The episode, titled One Green Haven, Six Linked Villages, looks beyond Xixinan to five nearby villages that together form a tourism cluster. Rather than each village vying for the same visitors, they have developed complementary attractions: bamboo raft rides, a sightseeing train, homestays, and nighttime fish-lantern tours. By connecting these experiences into a complete travel route, the network encourages visitors to stay longer and spend more, allowing more local businesses to benefit from the growing tourist traffic.
At the heart of this cooperation is a revenue-sharing model that ensures the benefits are distributed equitably. Under the mechanism, 70 percent of revenue goes to the village where a business operates, 20 percent is distributed according to the original equity ratio—with Xixinan village taking 5 percent and the other five villages taking 3 percent each—and 10 percent is retained by the town's operating company as working capital. This structure allows different villages to benefit from shared tourism resources while encouraging each to develop its own distinctive businesses.
The impact has been significant. More than 70 percent of residents in the town now work in tourism, and in 2025, each village generated more than 1 million yuan (about $140,000) in revenue. This has helped ensure that the benefits of tourism are shared across the town, rather than concentrated in a single village. The model demonstrates how natural scenery, connected tourism routes, and a shared-interest mechanism can turn visitor traffic into broader rural development.
The implications extend beyond this single town. As rural communities across China seek new ways to share opportunities and prosperity, the six-village cluster offers a glimpse of how collaborative governance can transform viral fame into sustainable growth. By linking villages into a development cluster, the model addresses the challenges of rural revitalization—how to distribute gains fairly, how to avoid destructive competition, and how to build a resilient local economy. It also shows that online attention, often fleeting, can be harnessed for long-term benefit when communities work together.
People's Daily's Decoding Rural China's Governance series continues to explore such innovative approaches, providing insights into how grassroots governance shapes rural development. The six-village story is a compelling example of how shared prosperity can be achieved through cooperation, offering lessons for other regions facing similar challenges.
