Wu's village of Tongjing, which was below the national poverty line, was affected by water loss and erosion. Villagers there barely have enough to eat if they rely only on their own grain, according to Xu Ping, head of Yangchang Township, which administers the village.

However, the popularity of Chinese herbs has allowed the village's farmers to increase their incomes, Xu says.

The year Wu decided to stay home instead of going back to the city was a difficult but fruitful time for him. In 2007, Wu used his savings to start his own herb business, growing three kinds of herbs on a small plot of land that he rented.

By the end of the year, his hard work was rewarded with 60,000 yuan in profits, a tidy sum by most farmers' reckoning.

Wu began to collect market information to expand his business. In 2009, he established a rural cooperative which attracted more than 40 rural households by the end of the year, all of them herb farmers.

As of this spring, more than 80 rural households have become part of the cooperative, with their average annual incomes hitting about 50,000 yuan last year.

"The cooperative was definitely the right way to create further expansion," Wu says.

What Wu has done has been widely acclaimed in his village.

Last February, Peng Zhucai, secretary of the village's CPC committee, came to Wu. "Wu is like a vanguard to the villagers here," Peng says. "In a poor village, only able-bodied elites like him can lead people and help villagers to increase their incomes."

"People like Wu represent China's advanced productive force and they should be one of us [CPC members]," Peng says.

"The CPC has paid a lot of attention to local elites like Wu, who have returned from cities and started their own businesses," says Xie Yizuo, deputy head of the Zunyi branch of the China Executive Leadership Academy in Guizhou.

"China is an agricultural economy. Back during China's revolutionary period, the CPC launched land reforms and won the support of the farmers.The support of the worker-peasant alliance was very important in making the CPC a successful party," Xie says.

"Back then, it was farmers, who accounted for the majority of CPC membership at the time, who defeated millions of Kuomintang (KMT) troops," he adds.

Even today, with China taking its place as the world's second-largest economy, issues related to agriculture still hold great significance for the CPC.