As a livestream promoting local mushrooms gets underway in Qingyuan County, Lishui City, east China's Zhejiang Province, the steady rhythm of packing tape and scanning labels fills the small workshop. Villagers move briskly behind the camera, sorting products, sealing packages and preparing orders for delivery.
This is the Xiangxingu mushroom workshop, run by local entrepreneur Wu Xiaojun. Inside the workspace, shelves of locally grown mushrooms line the walls as workers shift between packaging and managing online orders for customers across China.
Such a workshop is part of Zhejiang's growing network of "common prosperity workshops" – a development model designed to bring jobs, skills and industrial opportunities directly into rural communities. Built through partnerships among village collectives, communities and enterprises, these workshops encourage companies to relocate suitable production and processing activities into villages, enabling residents to earn an income closer to home.
Five years after China designated Zhejiang as a demonstration zone for common prosperity, Zhejiang had established more than 12,700 "common prosperity workshops," providing employment opportunities for 551,000 people across the province.
The emergence of "common prosperity workshops" did not happen in isolation. It reflects a longer transformation in Zhejiang's countryside that began more than two decades ago with the "Green Rural Revival Program."