The 5th New Hope Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Training Program" Opens, Upgrading Measures such as the "Seed Plan" to "Long-Term Empowerment".

On November 2nd, the 5th Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Training Class," jointly organized by the China Guangcai Program Foundation, Beijing Federation of Industry and Commerce, and Sichuan Provincial Federation of Industry and Commerce, and co-sponsored by China Postal Savings Bank, Sichuan Chamber of Commerce, New Hope Group, and Sichuan Yonghao Charity Foundation, officially opened in Daxing District, Beijing. Following the opening ceremony, Liu Yonghao, Chairman of New Hope Group, delivered the first lecture to the trainees.

Wei Dong, Director of the Private Economy Development Bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission; Guo Feng, Director of the Guangcai Program Guidance Center of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee and Deputy Secretary-General of the China Guangcai Program; Lin Weimin, Member of the Party Committee, Vice Chairman, and First-Level Inspector of the Beijing Federation of Industry and Commerce; Zheng Zongqiang, Member of the Party Committee and Vice Chairman of the Sichuan Provincial Federation of Industry and Commerce; Du Chunye, Vice President of the Postal Savings Bank of China; Zhou Ming, Vice President of the Sichuan Branch of the Postal Savings Bank of China; Tang Jun, Full-time Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and Executive Secretary-General of the Sichuan Chamber of Commerce; Liu Yonghao, President of the Global Sichuan Chamber of Commerce and Chairman of New Hope Group; Liu Chang, Chairman of New Hope Liuhe Co., Ltd.; and representatives of entrepreneurs from the Beijing Sichuan Chamber of Commerce, among other guests, attended the opening ceremony.

The fifth Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Class" has 106 participants. The enrollment continues the school's long-standing tradition of diversity in terms of region, age, education, ethnicity, and background, maximizing support for areas most in need and providing the most valuable exchange and learning opportunities. This year's participants represent several record-breaking figures: the widest geographical coverage, spanning 28 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions; the most diverse backgrounds, including veteran village secretaries with decades of experience, college graduate village officials, returning entrepreneurs, veterans, and resident village secretaries; the largest representation of ethnic minorities, including participants from the five major autonomous regions and nine ethnic minority autonomous prefectures and counties across the country (Shui, Tu, Mulam, Qiang, Yi, She, etc.); and the widest age range, from 25 to 66 years old. During the seven-day intensive study program, participants will exchange ideas and learn from mentors from various fields.

"Holding the 'Village Chief Training Program' for Rural Revitalization integrates advantageous resources from government, industry, academia, and research, building a team of village chiefs who are politically sound and highly capable. This has grasped the key to talent revitalization, unlocking the vitality of rural revitalization, and is of great significance and far-reaching impact." At the opening ceremony, Wei Dong, Director of the Bureau of Private Economy Development of the National Development and Reform Commission, highly affirmed and praised the Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Training Program" in his speech. Wei Dong stated that the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee proposed to accelerate the modernization of agriculture and rural areas and solidly promote the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas. The 2025 Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Training Program" held by New Hope Group is an important measure to implement the spirit of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee. Meanwhile, he praised Liu Yonghao, Chairman of New Hope Group, for his active leadership in fulfilling the social responsibility of private entrepreneurs, stating, "Chairman Liu Yonghao has always emphasized that enterprises should have a spirit of magnanimity. He led New Hope Group in actively responding to the national call, spearheading the 'Village Chief Class' public welfare training program, fulfilling social responsibility with practical actions, and demonstrating a sense of responsibility for the times." Wei Dong also expressed his expectations for the "Village Chief Class" for rural revitalization, saying, "I hope New Hope Group will further improve and solidify the 'Village Chief Class,' enabling village chiefs to make significant contributions, showcase their talents, and demonstrate their abilities in the vast rural areas, thus promoting common prosperity in rural areas, a happier life, and a more beautiful countryside."

Guo Feng, Director of the Guidance Center for the Guangcai Program of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee and Deputy Secretary-General of the China Guangcai Program, stated in his speech that the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee reiterated the need to accelerate the modernization of agriculture and rural areas and solidly promote the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas. Talent is key to rural revitalization; from industry to governance, from ecology to villages, every aspect of rural revitalization cannot be separated from talent support. Chairman Liu Yonghao deeply understands General Secretary Xi Jinping's concept of combining investment in resources with investment in people. Once again, he took the lead, proactively planning talent training, further highlighting his unwavering commitment to his original aspirations, his dedication to giving back to society, and his pioneering spirit—always half a step ahead of the times.

In his address, Lin Weimin, member of the Party Committee, Vice Chairman, and First-Level Inspector of the Beijing Federation of Industry and Commerce, stated that, focusing on the key tasks of the "Hundred-Thousand Project," the Beijing Federation of Industry and Commerce has innovatively created the "Ten Thousand Enterprises Revitalizing Ten Thousand Villages" brand in the suburbs of Beijing. This brand emphasizes the construction of "New Era Leading Private Enterprises," Party building leadership, suburban characteristics, and exemplary demonstrations, guiding private enterprises to integrate into rural revitalization and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results through village-enterprise co-construction. Lin Weimin encouraged the trainees to study diligently and achieve success, hoping they would apply their knowledge to the broad stage of rural revitalization, hone their skills in grassroots practice, and realize their value by serving the people.

After the opening ceremony, Liu Yonghao delivered the first lecture to the trainees entitled "Rooted in the Fertile Soil of Hope, Creating a Shared Future in the Countryside." He believes that rural revitalization requires a two-pronged approach, addressing both "hard" and "soft" aspects. The "hard" aspect relies on investment—money, projects, and engineering—to generate value. The "soft" aspect involves enhancing the comprehensive capabilities of rural development leaders and their understanding of rural governance; the "Village Chief Training Program" for rural revitalization is designed around this focus.

During the interactive session with the participants, one asked how to better integrate the more than 500 students and provide more opportunities for exchange and learning. Liu Yonghao stated that he would build platforms for the participants, acting as a "bridge," allowing them to learn from each other and form partnerships for mutual assistance. Secondly, he would produce training materials for rural revitalization, including techniques in planting, animal husbandry, and e-commerce operations. Thirdly, he would collaborate with financial institutions to select outstanding participants and provide financial support to their villages or projects.

A Platform for Rural Talent Cultivation Takes Shape Through Concerted Efforts

The Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Class," with its core educational philosophy of openness and pragmatism, aims to build a learning and exchange platform for grassroots rural managers and a collaborative platform for social forces dedicated to rural revitalization. It links various resources, integrating high-quality resources from government, industry, academia, and research, and through joint efforts, gradually expanding the scale and depth of training. Over the past five years, a platform for rural talent cultivation open to the entire society has begun to take shape. This year's Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Class" is jointly organized by China Postal Savings Bank, Sichuan Chamber of Commerce, New Hope Group, and Sichuan Yonghao Charity Foundation.

China Postal Savings Bank, as one of the organizers of this year's Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Class," has been positioned by the state to serve agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, urban and rural residents, and small and medium-sized enterprises since its inception. With nearly 40,000 branches covering 100% of cities and over 98% of counties nationwide, it is a bank whose primary mission and responsibility is to serve agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, and has become a major force in serving rural revitalization. China Postal Savings Bank strategically prioritizes serving rural revitalization, establishing specialized departments such as the Rural Finance Department and the Inclusive Finance Department. It has also issued guidelines for special credit policies related to rural revitalization, built a professional financial service team, and constructed a complete financial organization system and service framework for rural revitalization. Simultaneously, it has developed differentiated service models targeting five representative customer groups in agricultural and rural scenarios: villages, communities, households, enterprises, and shops. These models include proactive credit granting for rural areas, credit village construction, specialized industry services, and comprehensive development of key rural projects.

In his address on behalf of the organizers, Du Chunye, Vice President of China Postal Savings Bank, stated that jointly hosting the Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Training Program" represents a deep cross-domain strategic cooperation between Postal Savings Bank and New Hope Group, further deepening their strategic partnership. The goal is to jointly create a rural revitalization ecosystem integrating "financial services + industrial empowerment + talent revitalization," allowing resources from all parties to resonate and work in the same direction. Du Chunye also outlined directions for deepening cooperation, starting with the "Village Chief Training Program." These include: first, strengthening intellectual empowerment by tailoring a series of financial knowledge training courses for the program participants; second, deepening the construction of credit villages by using the "Village Chief Training Program" as a link to further promote the construction of the credit village system and expand the coverage of credit villages; third, focusing on industrial revitalization by increasing credit support in key areas such as specialty farming, agricultural product processing, and rural tourism; and fourth, assisting in the construction of smart villages by leveraging the "four flows in one" resources of the Postal Group to support the construction of livable, business-friendly, and beautiful villages in areas such as rural e-commerce, logistics and distribution, and digital finance.

The other organizer, the Sichuan Chamber of Commerce, is a shared spiritual home and value platform for Sichuan businesspeople worldwide. Since its establishment, it has continuously participated in poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, allocating special funds, precisely connecting resources, facilitating industrial cooperation, utilizing its media matrix to guide Sichuan businesspeople to return to their hometowns to invest and start businesses, and providing paired assistance to underdeveloped counties and villages to achieve comprehensive revitalization. It promotes the organic integration and two-way progress of Sichuan business transformation and upgrading with the implementation of national strategies, and has integrated and invested hundreds of billions of yuan over the years to promote the precise implementation of the national development strategy of putting people first and achieving common prosperity.

Tang Jun, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and Executive Secretary-General of the Sichuan Chamber of Commerce, stated that this Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Training Program" is a major public welfare project supported and participated in by the Sichuan Chamber of Commerce. Its aim is to continuously channel various resources and factors towards agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, promote the transformation and upgrading of Sichuan businesses, and achieve a two-way convergence of efficient and high-quality agriculture, livable and workable villages, and prosperous and affluent farmers. Ultimately, it aims to achieve the goals of strong agriculture, beautiful countryside, and wealthy farmers. This is not only the good intention behind holding the Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Training Program" in Daxing, but also a grand vision for village secretaries to innovate and realize their ambitions.

Liu Chang, Chairman of New Hope Liuhe, believes that "Rural revitalization is not a 'solo performance' but a 'grand chorus.' The graduation of trainees is not the end, but a new starting point for growth together with all partners." She stated that the New Hope Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Training Program" has been held for five consecutive years, receiving applications from more than 4,000 village cadres nationwide and training more than 500 trainees. She herself has been exchanging ideas with village chiefs for the past three years, sharing her thoughts on industry and business, as well as her observations of industry trends, with grassroots cadres each year.

Continuous Self-Transformation: Innovating Teaching Models and Curriculum Design

For 43 years, New Hope Group has consistently integrated social responsibility with corporate development, exploring and leading how to contribute to poverty alleviation and rural revitalization at different stages of social development. From initiating the "Guangcai Program" during the industrial poverty alleviation stage, to implementing the 4+N targeted poverty alleviation model and launching the training program for 100,000 green-collar new farmers during the precision poverty alleviation stage, and then to implementing the "Five-Five Project" for rural revitalization and launching the "Village Chief Class" for rural revitalization during the rural revitalization stage, the boundaries of New Hope's "Guangcai Program" have become increasingly broad through repeated exploration and breakthroughs.

To date, the Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Class" has been successfully held five times, achieving excellent practical and social results. In 2025, it was selected as one of the first batch of outstanding cases in the national "Ten Thousand Enterprises Revitalizing Ten Thousand Villages" initiative. More than 80 media outlets, including Xinhua News Agency and People's Daily, have reported on it, and it has won numerous honors, including the 2024 People's Daily Rural Revitalization Innovation Case and the 2023 Starlight Plan Rural Revitalization Excellent Case. However, the Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Class" continues to evolve, constantly summarizing experiences and exploring and upgrading its curriculum design and founding model. Wang Ziyue, Chairman of the Sichuan Yonghao Charity Foundation and General Manager of the Brand Department of New Hope Group, reviewed the five-year experience of the "Village Chief Class" and stated that, by incorporating feedback from guiding units, soliciting suggestions from previous participants, and drawing on the experience of other excellent training programs, the teaching model and curriculum design for this year's program have been innovated. The resource linkage and subsequent empowerment mechanisms have also been upgraded, allowing the "Village Chief Class" to systematically deepen its focus from "short-term intensive learning" to "long-term ecological empowerment."

On the one hand, this year's "Village Chief Class" attempted to make the classroom more dynamic, breaking through the limitations of traditional training's "unified instruction and one-way output." It innovatively adopted a "dialogue-based" teaching approach, holding face-to-face forums between villages and enterprises to create a platform for direct communication between businesses and village chiefs. This model allows village chiefs and rural economic leaders to have "zero-distance" contact with enterprises, effectively breaking down information barriers, directly connecting the "demand side" and the "supply side," understanding each other's concerns and pain points, and promoting efficient resource allocation. Secondly, it helps village chiefs and rural economic leaders broaden their horizons, move beyond "administrative thinking," and elevate their perspectives, learning to solve rural problems using market logic. Thirdly, by establishing a long-term mechanism and forming a sustainable cooperation platform, it promotes the long-term flow of information, resources, and talent, exploring potential sustainable cooperation models to build a new ecosystem of "enterprises leading villages, villages promoting enterprises, and win-win cooperation between villages and enterprises."

On the other hand, it rejuvenates the classroom by inviting outstanding talents from various fields, including two individuals born in the 2000s, such as a village secretary skilled in digital empowerment of rural revitalization and a new media operations expert serving brands like Huawei, to form a youth mentor group. This group will "input new thinking, transmit new methods, and connect new resources" for the trainees, breaking down generational barriers. This helps connect the knowledge, technology, concepts, and needs of the younger generation with rural scenarios, practices, and products, addressing village chiefs' "skill anxiety" and injecting new momentum into village development. If this model becomes the norm, it will become an important link for "talent sinking to the grassroots and intellectual upward mobility" in rural revitalization.

This year's Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Training Program" places special emphasis on promoting communication and building connections among participants, while showcasing the unique characteristics and specialties of the participating villages to facilitate networking. Through a "Village Gala," participants are guided to plan and participate in programs such as ethnic costume shows and regional folk song medleys, allowing them to quickly become acquainted. A story auction allows participants to share their experiences and challenges, learn from each other, and even foster cooperation between villages in different provinces.

Furthermore, the program fully leverages the advantages of Beijing as the host city. Using Beijing as a learning hub, the program will utilize the capital's technological, intellectual, governance, and innovation advantages. Participants will visit leading companies in the internet and advanced manufacturing sectors, such as JD.com and Xiaomi, as well as pilot villages for the construction of "Red and Beautiful Villages," to learn about cutting-edge practices in areas such as smart agriculture and digital villages. They will experience firsthand how digitalization and AI are bringing new changes to national development and rural revitalization, discuss new models of rural governance, and provide reference cases for research on rural revitalization in China.

More Than Just Training: Upgrading from "Short-Term Training" to "Long-Term Empowerment"

The Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Training Program" has consistently innovated and upgraded around how to maximize the benefits for its participants, emphasizing the transformation of results. To this end, the program first proposed the "Seed Plan" in 2024. This plan selects a group of participating villages with development potential as "seeds," organizing experts and media in relevant fields to conduct on-site investigations, accurately identifying common bottlenecks and differentiated needs hindering the development of each village. It not only provides diagnostic advice for the development of participating villages but also leverages the influence of central-level media to help build brand IPs for these villages, integrating social forces to jointly explore multi-faceted support and empowerment for their development.

In 2025, the Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Training Program" led more than ten central-level media outlets, including People's Daily Online and Economic Daily, along with several industry experts, to conduct in-depth on-site visits to more than ten participating villages in Inner Mongolia, Zhejiang, and Guizhou provinces. By visiting villages and towns, exploring local pillar industries such as agriculture and animal husbandry, distinctive cultural tourism, and primary processing, the team gained a detailed understanding of the current state of local industrial development and rural landscape. They also conducted face-to-face interviews with key figures such as village secretaries, business leaders, and government representatives. The accompanying experts' suggestions opened up new avenues for the development of the visited villages; and extensive in-depth reporting by the accompanying media significantly enhanced the villages' visibility, attracting more tourists and potential investors.

Offline training is often limited by geographical location, time, and resources, leading to insufficient continuity and a lack of follow-up after training; it also lacks personalization, as uniform content fails to meet diverse needs. To overcome these shortcomings, the Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Class" has launched a Green Collar Alumni Column on the New Hope Group's official website, creating a cloud-based communication and exchange platform for "Village Chief Class" participants. This innovation builds a continuous learning ecosystem for participants, upgrading traditional offline centralized training into a "full-time, all-domain, and all-element" digital learning ecosystem; promoting exchange and mutual learning among participants, striving to become an "experience museum" and "wisdom brain" for "village chiefs"; and creating a digital hub for "participants-resources-needs," facilitating resource collaboration and value co-creation. This transforms short-term centralized training into long-term ecological connections, building "weak ties" and "strong value bonds" among participants through digital means.

With the in-depth implementation of innovative measures such as the "Seed Program," the Rural Revitalization "Village Chief Class" has formed a closed loop of "training-practice-empowerment," breaking through the shortcomings of traditional talent cultivation models and gradually upgrading from "short-term training" to "long-term empowerment."