ZHENGZHOU, Oct. 10  -- Like many poor villages across China, Chengzhuang Village in central China's Henan Province has seen a decline in its young population they leave for cities to work, returning home only once a year.

"The more people migrated to work, the poorer the village became," said the village Party-chief Chen Haifeng.

With a dwindling population and, by extension, dwindling wealth, the village entered a vicious cycle as more businesses closed over the past several years.

"The biggest development bottleneck was the lack of funds. No one in the village was rich enough to start a business," Chen said.

The crumbling development was also in part due to huge roadblocks faced by farmers seeking mortgage loans, he said.

But an innovative new program initiated by the county Rural Credit Cooperatives is helping revive the small village by granting farmers easy access to loans based on credit.

"We needed to activate the farmers first in order to help them become rich," said Gao Feng, director of the county's Rural Credit Cooperatives.

Yang Guojian was among the first group of villagers who was benefited from the credit loan. Due to family reasons, Yang had not been able to work outside of the village, nor could he support his family by the meager income from farming. He then applied for a credit loan and opened a supermarket in the village thanks to a 100,000 yuan (about 16,288 U.S.dollars) start-up loan.

"The supermarket earned over 40,000 yuan in the first year. It improved our lives," said Yang.

Since opening, business has been good. Seeing the success of one small loan has pushed Yang to apply for more loans as he eyes expansion of his supermarket business, with plans to open two more chain stores in other villages next year.

With the help of a credit loan, villager Liu Jianrui started his own chicken breeding business. Thanks to a credit loan, Liu was able to raise 6,000 chickens by storing corn feed from when the price was low, bought with the loan. The move helped him save 0.4 yuan per kilogram of corn.

"I've never imagined I can get a loan without anything. The policy to benefit common people is wise, for without start-up capital, no matter how capable you are, you still cannot run a business," Liu said.

According to Chen Haifeng, more than 50 out of 130 households in Chengzhuan village have breeding businesses, some of which have developed into big breeding enterprises. The former "quiet village" has now started to attract migrant workers from outside.

So far, a total of 18,347 credit loans totalling 1.455 billion yuan have been granted in Lankao County, according to the Credit Cooperatives. About one third households in Chengzhuang Village have had applied for a small credit loan.

"The village has become rich, people out for work are returning back and people from outside are also coming to find opportunities," said Chen.