Per capita net income for farmers in eastern China's Zhejiang Province is expected to reach 8,100 yuan (US$1,118) for 2007, an average annual increase of 10.4 percent in the past five years.

Speaking at a local rural work conference in Hangzhou on Monday, Cheng Weishan, director of the provincial agriculture department, said Zhejiang was not an arable-land-rich province but its farmers' income had been outstanding in the country.

"Most of them make a living in non-agricultural fields. They put down the agriculture tools and set up township enterprises after the country introduced the reform and opening up to the outside world policy in the late 1970s," he said.

"At present, one out of 26 Zhejiang people is running his or her own private enterprise," said Cheng.

Zhejiang is by no means an isolated case in which farmers benefit from township enterprises.

China's Minister of Agriculture Sun Zhengcai said last month in a report to the country's top legislature that per capita net income for the 900 million rural residents was expected to surge by 7 percent to stand at 4,000 yuan in 2007.

In the southern Guangdong Province, per capita net income for farmers was estimated to climb to 5,450 yuan last year.

"Our strategy focused on developing leading township enterprises and specialized cooperative economic organizations," said Huang Longyun, Guangdong executive vice governor at a local rural work conference held on January 10.