Rabbit king reaps a rich bounty
Date: June 15 2002

By John Schauble

Ren Xuping was the runt of the litter in his home village of Yuanyang in China 's western Sichuan province. When he was 13 his family was too poor to send him to high school and he was not strong enough to labour in the rice fields.

In 1980, his father brought home two rabbits for his son to look after. The doe was already pregnant. Eight weeks later, the two rabbits became 10.

The young Ren sold the eight little bunnies for three yuan (80 cents) a pair. "I was very happy," he recalled this week. With the money he bought more female rabbits and an empire was born.

More than 5.5 million rabbits later, Ren Xuping, 35, is a very rich man. Not that you would guess this to meet him. There is no fancy house, no BMW in the driveway, no bejewelled wrist watch, indeed none of the ostentatious signs that so often mark out the new rich in China .

Instead Mr Ren, acclaimed as China 's "rabbit king", has poured most of the money back into the business of breeding and selling rabbits for meat and fur. People in Sichuan love rabbit meat and the animals themselves are, of course, remarkably productive.

Mr Ren estimates his Sichuan Xuping Rabbit Company has assets of about 10 million yuan ($A2.4 million).

Along the way the rabbit king has earned the accolades of the local and central Chinese governments, been hailed as a model worker and received a visit from the architect of China 's economic reforms, the late Deng Xiaoping.

Mr Ren's story is rare and the Chinese Government would dearly like to see it replicated to prove that its policies of "opening up and reform" have worked. This is especially so in rural areas where the more common solution among the poor is to head to the cities for work.
Mr Ren's early successes as a rabbit breeder attracted the attention of the local Communist Party officials. In 1985 the US-based aid agency Heifer International, which since 1944 has provided livestock and training to poor farmers in 47 countries, was looking for skilled rabbit breeders to start a program in China .

"Until 1984, although my rabbit raising was on a large scale, the technology was not very high and my productivity was quite low," he said.
Mr Ren was given a breeding stock of 48 Californian and New Zealand pure-breds, together with technical training from Heifer. After this his business took off and his rabbits started to breed . . . well, like rabbits.
A key concept of the Heifer organisation is that each recipient must pass on to others some of the offspring of the farm animals they receive. Called "passing on the gift", it is aimed at helping communities become self-sustaining.
Mr Ren has repaid his debt many times over, combining philanthropy with business by passing on thousands of free rabbits and giving training to poor local families. He has also been involved in sending rabbits to North Korea and will soon send off a colony to Thailand .
In 1990 he established the private Xuping Rabbit Training School, where about 300,000 farmers from across China have come to study rabbit husbandry. In some villages surrounding his base in Dayi County, 50 kilometres from Chengdu, up to 40 per cent of farmers are now keeping rabbits.

More than 100 of the families Mr Ren has encouraged into the rabbit business have become very wealthy.

Even modest rabbit-farming ventures can provide an income of about 7000 yuan a year - roughly three times that of the average farmer.

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