Stories of High-Quality Development | Barren coastal flats transformed through marine conservation and rural revitalization

Narrator: Gu Dongju, Party Branch Secretary and Village Committee Director, Haifeng Village, Sanyu Town, Tongzhou Bay River-Sea Joint Development Demonstration Zone, Jiangsu Province

I am a native of Haifeng village. Having lived here more than half my life, I can sum up my deepest feeling in one sentence: the sea has changed, and so have the people. When I was a child, the tidal flats were our source of food, land my father's generation had shaped by carrying soil on shoulder poles. Today, the sea has become a "treasure bowl" in our hands. We no longer rely on brute force, but on rules that protect the sea, and industries that invigorate it.

More than 50 years ago, this place was a saline-alkali wasteland where nothing would grow. My father's generation carried mud on their shoulders and dug ditches to drain the salt. One spade and one basket at a time, they worked for nearly 20 years to turn the wasteland into farmland. Back then, their goals were simple. They just wanted the land to grow enough grain to keep their families fed.

But relying on brute strength alone to grow crops on the tidal flats never brought prosperity. In the 1980s, the villagers looked for a new path and followed the trend of clam farming. Everyone thought that stocking more seedlings and adding more feed would bring a good harvest. But their efforts were impatient and aggressive, which made things go wrong. Feed could not keep up, and disease followed. Their hard-earned money was lost, and the nearshore tidal flats suffered too.

After these setbacks, people gradually realized that living off the sea means thinking not only about "taking" but also about how to "nourish" it. During my years as Party secretary, I have kept returning to one question: how can we protect this sea while truly improving the villagers' lives?

Once I figured out the logic, the path became clear. The village set rules for sea management and protection, assigned dedicated personnel to patrol the sea every day and put an end to disorderly farming and fishing. At the same time, more than 1,000 mu of saline-alkali land was converted to grow pumpkins and soybeans, easing the burden on the sea and allowing it to recover.

We always keep one principle in mind: we must never earn money at the expense of future generations. That is why we follow a model of "farming one-third and resting two-thirds," so the sea can slowly recover.

When efforts are made to truly protect the sea, the sea will give back. Nearshore water quality is getting better, the quality of our seafood has improved and prices have risen with it. Using scientific and standardized aquaculture methods, farmers can harvest 4,000 kilograms of seafood per tide, with market prices stable at 30 to 36 yuan ($4-$5) per kilogram. Returns are stable, and risks are low. The days of losing money as a result of working blindly are gone. Today, the village's development is no longer limited to tidal flat aquaculture. Leveraging the coastal advantage of Tongzhou Bay, we work with nearby enterprises and industrial parks to help young people and people in need find jobs close to home. Villagers have shifted from working the tides to working in port-related industries and the blue economy, and their employment options keep broadening. From working the tides to port-related manufacturing, the output value of a single piece of major marine engineering equipment now equals the harvest of several thousand mu of tidal flats in the past.

From sea farming to venturing into the deep sea, we have abandoned the old path of exploiting the sea to exhaustion. We have seized the historic opportunities of China's drive to become a strong maritime nation and cultivated leading industries such as marine engineering equipment, new materials and modern textiles. By combining ecological conservation with development, we have preserved our blue seas and clear skies while putting more money in villagers' wallets.

Building strength through the sea is our duty as coastal people. From the older generation who carried mud to reclaim wasteland to our generation developing industries and bringing prosperity to the people, the way we work has changed. But our generations-old commitment to protecting the sea and prospering from it has never changed.