What would it be like to live in a village where everyone is rich? No struggling neighbors, no empty storefronts, just comfortable homes and a share of the profits for every family. It sounds like a fairy tale, but one place in China claims to be just that.
It's called Huaxi Village, in Jiangsu Province, and it calls itself the richest village in China. According to local authorities, every official villager has wealth of at least €100,000, a substantial amount by Chinese standards. But there's a big asterisk. That wealth applies only to the roughly 2,000 registered villagers, not the many thousands of migrant workers who also live and work there.
From Poor Farm Town to Boomtown
Huaxi was founded in 1961. Its transformation is credited to Wu Renbao, the former head of the village's Communist Party committee. He drew up a plan to turn a poor rural community into a modern, wealthy one, and he invested in raw materials such as aluminum.
Today the village runs a large business group with many different industries, listed on the stock exchange. It has even bought airplanes. The villagers are shareholders and have been paid a portion of the company's annual profits. Huaxi proudly calls itself a model communist village, and it's been nicknamed "Number One Village Under the Sky."
A Skyscraper in the Countryside
Nothing shows off Huaxi's ambitions quite like its skyline. To mark the village's 50th anniversary, it opened the Longxi International Hotel, a skyscraper about 1,076 feet tall. That's a remarkable sight for a place that still calls itself a village. It rises about 328 meters into the sky, a towering showpiece for a community that had started out as a poor rural locality only half a century earlier.
The Fine Print
Huaxi's riches haven't been shared equally. Besides its 2,000 villagers, the area has about 20,000 migrant workers and more than 28,000 people from nearby villages. Migrant workers are not counted as official residents, so they don't get the benefits.
Critics have also accused the Wu family of nepotism, pointing out how many top positions are held by family members. A 2004 study found that more than 90 percent of the village's total wealth was controlled by Wu Renbao's four sons. It has also been widely reported that villagers who leave risk losing all of their assets.
And the good times may be fading. Beginning in 2021, media outlets reported that the village's business group had suffered big losses. Dividends to villagers reportedly shrank from 30 percent of company profits to just 0.5 percent, and the village was reported to be deep in debt.
Where Millionaires Really Cluster
If you're looking for a place packed with genuine millionaires, the tiny country of Monaco on the French Riviera may be a better bet. More than 30 percent of its residents are millionaires, and in 2018, real estate prices there reached about €100,000 per square meter.
Monaco's wealth grew after its famous Monte Carlo Casino opened in the late 1800s, along with a rail link to Paris. It has no personal income tax for most residents, which has long attracted the wealthy.
So is there really a town where everyone is a millionaire? Not quite. Huaxi comes close on paper, at least for its official villagers. But as its story shows, a town's fortune depends a lot on who gets counted, and who gets left out.
