The Azalea Project

Challenges and Objectives

Located in Daicun Town in the southwestern Xiaoshan District in Hangzhou City, Dashigai Village, with more than 1,700 villagers, is a typical village on the outskirts of an economically developed city with a strong focus on industry and agriculture. The rapid development of urbanized industries has gradually reduced villagers' dependence on land and their sense of belonging to the village; on the other hand, the continuous sinking of government services has gradually deprived villages of their capacity for self-governance and further weakened villagers' sense of belonging. One of the most obvious consequences is the environmental deterioration of the village: random littering and haphazard construction.

Zhejiang's Green Rural Revival Programme, with ecological development at its core, has been promoted since 2003. Improving the habitat environment and village appearance is an important part. But to let the villagers take the initiative in the maintenance of the village environment and remove the haphazard construction in front of and behind the houses is a difficult task for both the village committee and township government.

In 2018, the then mayor of Daicun Township, on behalf of the Daicun Township government, led the initiative to launch the Azalea Project, with Dashigai Village as the pilot village. The Zhejiang Digital Economy Society (ZDES) and the Institute of Computer Innovation and Technology of Zhejiang University (ICIZU) joined as technical support providers for the Azalea Project.

The project has four objectives:

• To Ignite villagers’ proactiveness and build a rural governance community.
• To foster consensus among villagers and build a rural credit community.
• To build a rural brand of the community.
• To create a development model in social governance and economic growth interact and promote each other.

As the pilot village of the Azalea project, the Dashigai village has already removed the haphazard constructions in the village and collected more than 15 acres of land back to the village collective. It was decided to use these parcels to carry out a “Beautiful vegetable garden” sub-project; not only can this action improve the appearance of the village, but also allow villagers to participate in the planting, and vegetable sales can also increase the income of villagers and the village collective.

Collaboration Partners and Roles

As the initiator party of the project, the Daicun Town Government entrusted external organizations and connected and introduced external collaborative resources. It is also in charge of the framework design of the project. Additionally, the government provided financial support for the project.

The Daishigai village committee organized the villagers and acted as a bridge connecting them to the town government, external collaborators, and resources. With a deep understanding of village affairs and the villagers, it played a central role in implementing the Azalea Project within the village by organizing and mobilizing the villagers effectively. Later, the village committee incubated Hangzhou Azalea Agricultural Technology Company (HAATC) as the formal operational body responsible for organizing and guiding villagers to cultivate vegetables according to organic standards. HAATC also purchases the vegetables grown by the villagers following these standards and develops markets for external sales.

The ZDES played a crucial role in the early stages of the project by connecting with the ICIZU and accessing their technical development resources. This ensured the project's successful implementation at both the technological and operational levels in the beginning. Additionally, ZDES played a key role in incubating ATC, which later acted as the formal tech provider and market resource connector of the project.

Revitalisation Activities

In July 2019, the pilot project of The Azalea Project in Daicun Township was officially launched. In the offline part, the village committee set 5 acres of land scattered in front of and behind the houses as vegetable plots and set up a collective irrigation system so that each villager participating in the project could adopt a plot per head. In the meantime, they formulate a convention on vegetable cultivation so that everyone grows organic vegetables in accordance with the unified standards and requirements, and then the village collectives take care of the sales channels.

Each villager involved in the project is equipped with a personal data bank. A signage with a QR code and personal information is put in front of each plot to record the process of the vegetable planting. Other villagers can also scan the QR code to give him a score. All the information will enter the villager's personal data bank, forming his points. The ranking of points not only determines the priority of selling vegetables but is also a kind of honor for the villagers.

In the online part, the Azalea mini-program was launched, and the above data will be accessed on this platform; the villagers' points ranking is also showing on this platform.

In addition to the vegetable planting scenario, the team also initiated other sub-projects, such as raising chickens under the woods, with logic similar to the vegetable garden project. “Beautiful Yard” is aimed at allowing villagers to beautify their own yards. There are also public activities such as garbage classification, square dancing, and so on to unite the villagers. Villagers' participation in each of these scenarios will result in points accumulated in the online platform according to the rules.

The essence of the project is to encourage villagers to take action, mapping their offline contributing behaviors and positive actions to form points online and turn them into momentum for development.

Revitalisation Outcome

In less than half a year of the pilot, the appearance of Dashigai village has been greatly improved: the vacant land where garbage used to be piled up and built haphazardly has been turned into beautiful vegetable plots, and the villagers' incomes have been improved, and their willingness to participate in the public affairs of the village has been greatly enhanced.

The most important thing about the pilot project in Dashigai is that it has led to the establishment of HAATC, which has become one of the leading enterprises in Daicun Township, establishing an integrated operation mechanism of "planting, production and marketing" of high-quality agricultural products, and promoting the formation of an atmosphere of "everyone has something to do, and every family has income!" atmosphere of mutual enrichment.

At present, the HAATC and its workshop have driven more than 1,000 households to participate, offering 108 fixed and temporary job opportunities to villagers of Daicun township and surrounding towns and streets, of which 13 low-income farmers are included. It has driven the villagers to increase their income by more than 3.6 million yuan. The village collective economic income growth of 1.37 million yuan achieved a win-win situation for the enterprise, the village collectives, and the villagers.

In addition, the pilot project in Dashigai village and Daicun Township also led to the establishment of ATC, a technology company focusing on the construction and operation of digital villages.

In Dashigai Village and Daicun Township, HAATC gradually became the leader of the Azalea project, but however, based on the pilot project in Dashigai Village, ATC has been able to replicate the model in Xiaoshan Hangzhou, Yuhang Hangzhou, Cixi Ningbo, Wucheng Jinhua, Gulai Shaoxing, Maao Street Zhoushan, Ningxia, Gansu, Chongqing, etc., with a total of more than 300 administrative villages.

Among them, the replication in Cixi, Ningbo is particularly successful. With the support of the Cixi Municipal Political and Legal Committee, the project has been promoted throughout Cixi City. As of April 2023, there were 460,000 activated users in the project, with a daily average of more than 16,000 active users, and more than 6,700 activities have been carried out relying on the mini-program “Qunzhi points”, similar to the “Azalea mini-program”. In September 2023, Cixi's practice was selected as a national governance innovation case (2023).