Tiny screw products provide a powerful push towards prosperity for villagers in Dinghai, E China's Zhejiang

As screw manufacturing has become a characteristic industry of an island village in east China's Zhejiang province, more villagers are returning to their hometown to enter into business or find job opportunities.

Photo shows screw products. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

Heping village in Jintang township, located on Jintang Island in Zhoushan city of Zhejiang, previously had a weak industrial economy and poor transportation infrastructure. Due to the village's geographical location, the farms were scattered in separate plots, restricting the largescale development of agriculture.

In 1982, local people discovered business opportunities in the production of screw products. Gradually, screw manufacturing emerged as a pillar industry on the island.

In 2004, Wang Bin, a man in his 20s who had been working in places outside of the town, went on to become an apprentice at a local screw factory. In 2009, Wang opened up his own screw factory, buying a machine tool with his savings. Over the past years, he has purchased another three machine tools for the factory, which now generates an annual income of nearly 400,000 yuan for the man.

Since 2003, nearly 1,000 villagers who used to be migrant workers have returned to Heping village. After they received skills and entrepreneurship training, they were re-employed or managed to start their own businesses. At present, there are more than 60 small-sized screw factories located in the village.

Unlike Wang, who chose to go back to his village, Xu Zhen, a university graduate, had never expected that he would take over the family business of screw manufacturing instead of becoming an architect as he had always wanted to become.

With his father having repeatedly persuaded him to go back to the village to be in charge of the family business, Xu started to pay more and more attention to the industry. After conducting careful research into the industry, Xu believed that it would in fact become quite prosperous. So, in 2008, he decided to go back home.

Photo shows a screw factory in Dinghai district, Zhoushan city, east China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

Xu has strived to promote the digital transformation of screw manufacturing, suggesting that 20 percent of the factory's output value should be used to purchase numerical control machine tools. About 45 percent of the factory's screw products are manufactured using machine tools, which has significantly boosted the factory's earnings. In addition, half of the employees working at the factory are local villagers.

According to statistics provided by Jintang township, between January and June 2021, the output value of the township reached 4.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.5 percent.