Model workers

Back in Tengtou, Fu Deming agrees that the core interests of his primary electorates must be safeguarded and that expanding welfare without "cautious deliberation" could lead to "extremely detrimental consequences".

"It's impossible for us to ease current restrictions and give hukou (permanent residency) to migrant workers," he said. "Nobody (in the home village) would allow it."

Rural modernization has taken dramatically different forms across the country, although Huzhou, an ancient city in northern Zhejiang, is an odd exception. In 2006, it declared ambitious plans to become a model zone for rural development.

Today, 40 percent of its 1 million farmers already live in concentrated rows of townhouses, freeing up arable land for more organized, large-scale farming activities. The average Huzhou farmer's net income was 11,745 yuan last year, nearly double the national figure.

Less than a third of farmers in Huzhou are involved in agricultural work, with about 88 percent of the villagers' revenue coming from non-agricultural sectors. The city is still planning to push forward its initiative and merge nearly 6,000 villages to form 281 central rural communities, according to a statement provided by its information office.

"The government has pledged up to 3 billion yuan a year on rural development and relevant annual investment from other sectors total 8 billion yuan," said Liu Guoqiang, deputy director of Huzhou's agricultural and rural affairs office.

"We're doing this because we are capable of developing a rural model zone citywide," he explained. "Other regions suffer from important imbalances either from within their territory or among different sectors."

The rich, fertile nature of the land and waters in Huzhou was captured by a popular proverb dating back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279): "When the harvest of Suzhou (a city in Jiangsu) and Huzhou is ripe, the whole realm has enough."

While the income gap between urban and rural residents continues to widen nationwide, an opposite trend has taken shape in Huzhou.

The average income for urbanites was a record 3.33 times greater than the average for farmers last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. That ratio stood at 1.98 to 1 in Huzhou. However, regional advantages loom large for Huzhou and many booming villages. Huzhou, Tengtou and Huaxi are all situated in the much-affluent Yangtze River Delta region and each is within a four-hour drive from Shanghai.

"For places inland, it's a completely different story," said Song Zhenqiang, director of the information office for Huzhou's Wuxing district.

Despite poverty alleviation efforts, 35.9 million people in rural China, most of them inland, were still living on annual incomes of less than $175 last year, according to figures released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.