Cliffside Chinese village draws visitors with cable car. Can this be replicated?

BEIJING – Perched on a steep cliff 1,400m above sea level and overlooking a river canyon in the south-western Sichuan province, Gulu village had long been associated with developmental challenges because of its inaccessibility.

The village is home to 645 people, with about 80 per cent from the Yi ethnic minority group.

But it has experienced a tourism boom of late alongside improvements in basic infrastructure.

Not only was a 750m-long cable car line built in 2018 to enhance connectivity for the community, electricity and 5G connectivity have also been installed.

The cable car became a draw for visitors. Homestays have sprouted as hikers throng the village, drawn by stunning views of the Dadu River Canyon National Geopark, regarded as one of the country’s most beautiful.

Other villages that have become popular tourist destinations because of their natural scenery include Shibadong village in the Wuling Mountains in Hunan province and Huangling in Jiangxi province, known for its picturesque terrace fields.

Gulu village’s annual per capita income has grown from less than 2,000 yuan (S$370) before 2014 to over 21,000 yuan in 2025.

Some 300,000 visits were made to the village in 2025, generating a total revenue of 12 million yuan, according to Mr Zheng Wangchun, the village’s party secretary.

No wonder then that Gulu was hailed as a successful example of China’s rural revitalisation efforts at the country’s parliamentary meetings that started on March 4.

Mr Zheng, who is also a National People’s Congress (NPC) deputy, told The Straits Times: “The development of Gulu in recent years has truly confirmed what our General Secretary (President Xi Jinping) said, that ‘on the road to poverty alleviation, we will not leave any ethnic group or individual behind’.”

NPC deputies are members of China’s Parliament who vote on national laws and collect public opinion. They represent different groups ranging from farmers to ethnic minorities and the military, as well as regions like Hong Kong and Macau.

Mr Zheng is among the village’s returning entrepreneurs. He worked in Guangdong province for a few years and now runs a guesthouse in the village, drawing an annual revenue of around 200,000 yuan in 2025.

An NPC deputy since the current term started in 2023, Mr Zheng had advocated for additional infrastructure for tourists, for instance, 5G base stations, parking spaces and viewing decks.

Whether the Gulu model can be replicated in other remote rural communities remains an open question. China has about 484,000 villages and a total rural population of about 451 million.

Dr Chen Bo, a senior research fellow who studies China’s economy at the East Asian Institute in Singapore, said the case of Gulu village may be an exception.

If other villages have beautiful natural scenery, attracting tourists may be a viable strategy, he said.

“But for many remote villages in mountainous areas, building cable cars and highways may not be a good idea, as construction and maintenance might be very costly,” said Dr Chen.

Instead, moving rural residents to urban areas may be more effective. In fact, the government has been relaxing restrictions to make it more convenient for rural residents to live in urban areas, where the social security system is more robust, he added.

While China advances in high-tech sectors such as artificial intelligence and robotics, it still faces significant challenges in uplifting its rural population.

At the end of China’s last Five-Year Plan in 2025, the government said the urban-rural income divide has narrowed, from 2.56 to 1 in 2020 to 2.31 to 1 in 2025.

But the gap remains large. For instance, Gulu’s per capita income is still less than half of Sichuan’s urban level of about 49,000 yuan.

Ensuring Gulu’s popularity is no flash in the pan is on Mr Zheng’s mind. In previous interviews, he acknowledged that Gulu’s tourism industry is still in its infancy, and there is a need to learn from other villages in this aspect.

China declared victory over absolute poverty for its rural poor in 2021, marking an official end to a decades-long drive that lifted more than 700 million people over the threshold, defined as earning an income of about 4,000 yuan a year at 2020 prices.

But economists have pointed to the need to address the gap in social services received by rural and urban residents, for one thing, to ensure longer-term returns in poverty alleviation.

On a strategic level, China has been moving towards greater investment in human capital. It has also announced moves to train farmers in high-tech equipment and entrepreneurship beyond just giving subsidies.

Its new 15th Five-Year Plan, for 2026 to 2030, outlines a shift in emphasis, moving from building physical infrastructure towards greater investment in childcare, eldercare, health and education for all.

Whether or not this bears fruit will have implications not just on the country’s innovation and growth but also tangible outcomes for a vast rural population it has pledged not to leave behind.