--By Zhang Xiaoshan, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Researcher of the Rural Development Institute

Abstract

Fan Hengjin, born in 1966, is the manager of the Anhui Hengjin Agriculture Development Co.ltd located in Fuyang city, Anhui Province. After he graduated from middle school at 16, he became a farmer. Two years later in 1984, he began to sell colzas in Tianjin, Shandong and Hunan provinces. In 1985, he studied at an agricultural broadcasting and television school. In 1987, he leased 47 mou of farm land (about 8 acres) to purify and rejuvenate the local agriculture plants. In 1993, he set up a private agricultural research organization to cultivate and sell colzas. In 1998, he was the first farmer in China to conduct plant tissue culture in potatoes, mint, sweet potatoes and strawberries.

He has leased 2800 mou of land (about 470 acres) in Hefei city for strawberry sprouts cultivation. He sent six high-school-graduate employees to Anhui Agricultural University to study virus-free strawberry for half a year. 17 of his employees have received college education, including 2 postgraduates.

He has also leased 4700 mou of land (about 800 acres) in Fuyang city to cultivate two varieties of mint, and has obtained 13 patents. The production of mint is labor-intensive, and India is dominating global mint production. He is planning to build a 50,000 mou (about 8300 acres) mint production base in order to have a larger share of the global mint market.

In 2007, he leased 21,000 mou of land (about 3500 acres) for 15 years to cultivate virus-free potatoes in Hulun Beier city of Inner Mongolia. The assets there were estimated at 2.93 million yuan in 2007 and have quadrupled by now. He has transferred 33% of his shares to a group of 10 in Hulun Beier city at the 2007 price.

What is the bottleneck for an enterprise's development? It is not money and technology but the people. It is necessary to put a company under institutionalized management, improve the management efficiency, whether of an individual or a team, and upgrade the company's market control ability.

In conclusion, only through the combination of human capital improvement and technological and institutional innovations, can a company obtain inherent motivations for growth. In this case, even without government support, a company can still maintain sustainable development.

Since China started reform, all the innovations have derived from the grassroots. However, reform demands top-level planning, and in particular the combination of top-level planning and grassroots innovations. The success of top-level planning depends on the support and participation of the people (especially the generation at the crucial junction of development).

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