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 charging an entrance fee and how to share the benefits with neighboring villages instead of competing with them. The answer, as explored in the latest episode of People's Daily's video series Decoding Rural China's Governance, titled One Green Haven, Six Linked Villages, lies in a cooperative cluster model that has turned online fame into shared prosperity.
As reported by Media OutReach Newswire, the six villages—Xixinan and five nearby communities—have developed a range of complementary tourism experiences, including bamboo raft rides, a sightseeing train, homestays, and nighttime fish-lantern tours. By connecting these attractions into a complete travel route, the network encourages visitors to stay longer and spend more, allowing more local businesses to benefit from growing tourist traffic.
The core of this cooperation is a revenue-sharing model that distributes earnings equitably: 70 percent goes to the village where a business operates, 20 percent is distributed according to the original equity ratio (Xixinan village takes 5 percent and the other five villages take 3 percent each), and 10 percent is retained by the town's operating company as working capital. This mechanism allows different villages to benefit from shared tourism resources while encouraging each to develop its own distinctive businesses.
The implications are 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 success demonstrates that rural communities can avoid destructive competition and instead build resilient, inclusive economies by pooling resources and sharing gains. The model offers a template for other regions facing similar challenges of sudden tourism influxes without adequate infrastructure or equitable distribution mechanisms.
By linking six villages into a development cluster, the initiative showcases how natural scenery, connected tourism routes, and a shared-interest mechanism can turn visitor traffic into broader rural development. It also highlights the role of grassroots governance in fostering collaboration and ensuring that the benefits of tourism are widely shared. As rural areas worldwide grapple with how to manage viral attention and translate it into sustainable growth, this Chinese experiment provides a compelling case study in turning fleeting online fame into lasting community prosperity.
