The "Village Chief Class" program for rural revitalization by New Hope Group has been selected as an excellent case of 2025 business brand value innovation

On January 30th, the "Light of Long-term Compound Interest - 2025 China Business Brand Value Innovation Annual Meeting" hosted by China Business Journal was held in Beijing, and the "2025 Excellent Cases of Business Brand Value Innovation" were announced simultaneously. New Hope Group's rural revitalization program "Village Chief Class" was selected as an excellent case of 2025 business brand value innovation and won the award for social responsibility and sustainable communication.

Over the past 44 years since its establishment, New Hope has always closely integrated social responsibility with corporate development, exploring and leading ways to assist in poverty alleviation and rural revitalization during different stages of social development. In April 1994, the State Council issued the "National Eight-Seven Poverty Alleviation Plan," and the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce proposed organizing non-public economic figures to participate in the plan. Poverty alleviation requires industry to take the lead. On April 23, 1994, Liu Yonghao, Chairman of New Hope Group, along with 10 other entrepreneurs, responded to the national "Eight-Seven Poverty Alleviation Plan" and jointly issued an initiative titled "Let's Devote Ourselves to the Glorious Cause of Poverty Alleviation," marking the beginning of China's Guangcai (Glory) Program. Over the past 30 years, New Hope has invested more than 5 billion yuan in "old revolutionary base areas, ethnic minority areas, border areas, and impoverished areas," constructing over 150 Guangcai poverty alleviation factories of the same type in Xinjiang, Gansu, Ningxia, Sichuan, and other regions, driving local employment for over 60,000 people.

In 2020, China successfully completed the poverty alleviation targets and tasks in the new era as scheduled, eliminating absolute poverty. The No. 1 central document of 2021 clearly stated that comprehensively promoting rural revitalization is a major task for achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and the entire party and society should be mobilized to accelerate the modernization of agriculture and rural areas. In rural revitalization, talent is the key. As the leaders of rural development at the grassroots level in China, "village heads" (including village party branch secretaries, village directors, and leaders of village collective economies) play an important role in rural governance. In 2021, New Hope Group and the National School of Development at Peking University took the lead in initiating the first public welfare training program for "village head classes" on rural revitalization, aiming to train 100 grassroots cadres every year to assist in rural revitalization and improve the work philosophy of rural grassroots managers.

As of now, the "Village Chief Class" has been successfully held for five sessions, with over 4,000 "village chiefs" nationwide signing up for the selection and over 500 students graduating successfully, influencing and radiating over 3,000 villages. The "Village Chief Class" public welfare project integrates advantageous resources from government, industry, academia, and research, as well as experts, drawing on mature and excellent training experience, and has accumulated a mature and advanced training system. Since its inception, the "Village Chief Class" has received care and support from relevant departments such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the Central United Front Work Department, and the Guangcai Promotion Association, and has been selected into the first batch of outstanding case libraries for the national "Ten Thousand Enterprises Promoting Ten Thousand Villages" action.

To fully leverage the advantages and functions of the "Village Leaders Class" platform in rural revitalization, which include gathering talents, pooling resources, and strengthening connections, and to gradually upgrade from "short-term training" to "long-term empowerment", the "Village Leaders Class" project for rural revitalization first proposed the "Seed Plan" in 2024. This plan selects a group of student villages with development potential as "seeds", and organizes experts and media from relevant fields to conduct on-site inspections to accurately identify common bottlenecks and differentiated needs that restrict the development of each village. It not only provides suggestions for diagnosing and developing the student villages, but also leverages the influence of central-level media to assist in building the brand IP of the student villages, integrating social forces to jointly explore multi-faceted support and empowerment for the development of the student villages.

In 2025, the "Village Chief Class" for rural revitalization, in collaboration with more than ten central-level media outlets such as People's Daily Online and Economic Daily, as well as several industry experts, conducted in-depth field visits to over ten student villages in three provinces and regions, including Inner Mongolia, Zhejiang, and Guizhou. Through visiting local pillar industries such as villages, farming and aquaculture, characteristic cultural tourism, and primary processing industries in the student villages, they gained a detailed understanding of the current status of local industrial development and rural landscapes. They also conducted face-to-face interviews with key figures such as local village party branch secretaries, enterprise leaders, and government representatives. The suggestions provided by the accompanying experts opened up new ideas for the development of the visited villages. The extensive in-depth coverage by the accompanying media significantly increased the visibility of the visited villages, attracting the attention of more tourists or potential investors.

From leading and initiating the "Guangcai Program" during the industrial poverty alleviation stage, to practicing the 4+N targeted poverty alleviation model and launching a training program for 100,000 new rural green leaders during the targeted 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, New Hope's "Guangcai Program" has seen its boundaries broaden increasingly through continuous exploration and breakthroughs.