Reviving idle land and resources is a key focus for rural development, transforming potential into tangible growth. During the height of summer, visits to Yixing and Jintan reveal how underutilized land is being given new life, with stories of revitalization unfolding through smarter land use.
In the hills of Yixing's Hufu Town during the rainy season, a few deep purple waxberries still cling to the branches. In previous years, many ripe berries would fall to the ground before they could be picked. This year, however, fruit growers are breathing easier. The first phase of the Lianfeng Juice project has just begun trial production, swiftly turning waxberries from "hanging on the branch" to "sweetness online."
Stepping into the Lianfeng Juice production workshop in early July, the air is filled with the aroma of tea and fruit. A new bottling line operates smoothly as workers move about, adjusting equipment and recording parameters. Outside, crates of lime juice, orange juice, and other products are neatly stacked, ready for shipment. Just a year ago, this factory site presented a very different picture.
Yixing is the core birthplace of Jiangnan tribute tea culture and a key tea industry cluster in the Yangtze River Delta. As an area where township enterprises developed early, many local businesses initially grew rapidly but often inefficiently on town and village land. With industrial evolution, problems like low land-use efficiency, outdated industrial structures, and aging buildings have become apparent, leaving many factory buildings idle and becoming "dormant burdens."
The factory of Liankang Food Technology was one such case.
"These factory buildings were completed in 2015, but the property registration procedures weren't finalized at the time. The original production project's market competitiveness declined year by year, and eventually, the space was left vacant," said Bao Xufeng, Administrative Director of Liankang Food Technology (Yixing) Co., Ltd., standing in the bright, spacious workshop. The company had land and buildings, but without clear property rights, attempts to shift production or seek financing were severely constrained. The idle factory represented a dormant asset, leaving the company in a difficult position.
A turning point arrived in 2025. The company resolved to introduce a new project and revitalize the old factory on its own. With assistance from the town government, the Yixing Natural Resources and Planning Bureau proactively offered policy support. "Staff visited several times, helping us clarify property relations, complete registration materials, and guiding us step-by-step to obtain the real estate ownership certificate," Bao Xufeng said.
That slim real estate ownership certificate acts like a corporate "ID card," providing the foundation and confidence for compliant development. With clarified property rights and revitalized assets, the new project landed smoothly. The Lianfeng Juice green food industry cluster project introduced by Liankang Food was successfully selected as a key agricultural project in Jiangsu Province. Currently, part of the project's first-phase production line is in trial operation, focusing on healthy beverages that combine tea and fruit drinks like lime juice and waxberry juice.
"After the first phase is operational, annual tea consumption could reach 180 to 240 tons, directly driving an additional 28 to 35 million yuan in annual sales for local Yixing tea enterprises," Bao Xufeng shared happily.
An even greater transformation is quietly taking place in the mountain orchards. The project's second phase will focus on fresh fruit juicing and compound juice processing and bottling, leveraging local specialty fruits like Hufu waxberries and Yangshan honey peaches for deep processing. "Previously, the comprehensive utilization rate of local waxberries was less than 40%; most would rot on the ground, which was heartbreaking to see," Bao Xufeng noted. After the second phase launches, the annual demand for Hufu waxberries is expected to be around 4,000 tons, increasing the utilization rate by about 40 percentage points, with an estimated annual output value of approximately 10 million yuan.
The journey from "rotting in the field" to "pressed into juice" and then to broader markets means farmers can not only increase income through fresh fruit sales but also share in the added value from the processing chain. This single project connects tea farmers, fruit growers, enterprises, and village collectives. As the industrial chain extends, the "flowing water" of increased income continues to spread.
Chen Cheng, head of the Land Use Regulation and Natural Resource Development Utilization Section at the Yixing Natural Resources and Planning Bureau, explained that Yixing is fully utilizing higher-level policies and seizing pilot opportunities. These include provincial government policies supporting urban renewal actions, and guidance from national pilot zones for integrated urban-rural development and urban pilot programs for redeveloping inefficient land. The approach involves comprehensively using planning and land policies to guide market entities in redeveloping existing construction land resources. "Within this policy framework, and based on local realities, we have refined research and issued implementation opinions at the operational level. The 'Lianfeng Juice' project applied this policy to complete its land procedures," he said.
Simultaneously, the Yixing Bureau has responded to policy requirements from the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Natural Resources. In rural areas, based on practical village planning, it uniformly issues construction project planning permits for industrial projects.
"This is precisely why the 'Lianfeng Juice' project passed the completion inspection for construction project planning early this year, achieved building ownership registration, and fully clarified the relationship between land use rights and building property rights, eliminating the project party's concerns," Chen Cheng stated. With support from national and provincial policy documents, Yixing is comprehensively promoting the integrated development of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries in rural areas, strengthening planning guidance, and particularly focusing on the redevelopment and utilization of existing rural land resources. It is exploring a standardized and efficient path for land element保障 with "Yixing characteristics."