Natural Landscape Outside, Urban Life Inside - the JC Model

HANGZHOU, China, Sept. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- China's characteristic towns that originated in Zhejiang are spreading across China - Anji is an ecological county with distinctive features in the north of Zhejiang. Depending on its local bamboo groves and white tea industry, Anji has created a bamboo industry from 108 mu (1 mu = 666.67m²) of bamboo groves. The value of the industry's output is 20 billion yuan. It also has turned 187 rural villages into picturesque scenic areas.

On Aug. 15, 2005, Xi Jinping, who was Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee Secretary at the time, visited Anji and put forward the scientific judgment that "clear waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" for the first time.

In recent years, a group of characteristic towns have appeared in Zhejiang. Upholding the judgment that "clear waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets", depending on their local natural landscape and cultural traditions, through the "primary industry, secondary industry and tertiary industry" and integrated development, those towns turn traditional industries into new driving forces to promote new urbanization and regional economic transformation and upgrading.

JC Group is one of the representatives - in terms of characteristic town creation, the JC Model is worth learning from.

Established in Zhejiang, JC Group has JC characteristic towns as its core. It's committed to building a complete ecological city system in which "humans, industry, city" form an organic whole and have highly integrated development. In the past 8 years, JC Group went beyond the boundaries of traditional commerce, building town economies with whole ecological chains, turning Chinese characteristic towns from a concept into a mainstay for fixing and boosting China's economy.

To JC Group, characteristic towns are neither towns nor districts. They have no geological boundaries. JC characteristic towns insist that people come first and industry is the priority. Depending on local physical geography, history, culture and industrial development, they effectively combine urban and rural resources, suit their measures to their local conditions. They are "special and strong, concentrated and united, small and beautiful, energetic and new". They stress "letting the city integrate into nature; letting the residents see the mountains and water, and retain a sense of nostalgia."

Guided by this idea, JC characteristic towns are releasing innovative energy nationwide. At present, JC Group has 58 characteristic town projects under construction across China. Its government contracts have exceeded 500 billion yuan, covering Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan, Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou and Jilin provinces.

The Tianmenshan Fairyland Town of Zhangjiajie created by JC Group is one of the best examples of the above. Tianmenshan Town is on the south of Tianmen Mountain National Forest Park. It's only 8km from Zhangjiajie, at an elevation of 1,518.6m. The town has a mature karst landform, the richest and best tourism resources in Yongding District. Therefore, Tianmenshan Fairyland Town will combine tourism with its urban and rural construction, industrial and agricultural development, commerce and trade, transportation and communication, real estate development, infrastructure by deep exploring, relying on, absorbing, integrating and linking relevant industrial resources, integrating cultural experience, sports and fitness, ecological holidays, business conferences, and gradually develop into the best example of characteristic towns with "water in the mountains, mountains in the town, the town in green".

Wei Jie initiated the "sunflower model" and brought new ideas for China's urbanization.

At the 2017 High-Level Seminar on Characteristic Town Construction and Regional Development sponsored by JC Group, JC Group's Board Chairman Wei Jie had in-depth discussion on the development trends and patterns of characteristic towns with authorities, leaders, experts, scholars and commentator from political, legal and financial circles.

At this seminar, Wei Jie for the first time put forward the "sunflower model" for characteristic town creation and brought new ideas and new examples for China's urbanization. Wei Jie explained: "the 'sunflower model' means to turn new urbanization into a closed loop with a complete model based on the local features, by sticking to the core industry, forming a well-developed core industry cluster - financial services, urban construction, industrial operation and asset securitization.

For example, for Tianmenshan Fairyland Town of Zhangjiajie, considering Zhangjiajie's features, we will make tourism their core industry and add hotels, healthcare, education and cultural industries to form a sunflower-like industry cluster."

JC characteristic towns exist for and flourish for their industries. They have effectively avoided becoming ghost towns. Through clear business models and strategic planning, JC characteristic towns will become "engines" for industrial innovation, promote further transformation and upgrading of regional economies whilst support the great-leap-forward development of China's new urbanization.

At the seminar, the National Development and Reform Commission's International Cooperation Center's PPP Project Director Zhou Kaibo said: "We hope all enterprises can create characteristic towns one after another with sincerity, perseverance and the spirit to pursue perfection, let the local residents and people who will come to settle down in those towns feel proud, happy, successful, thereby realizing all Chinese people's Chinese Dream."

SOURCE JC Group