It was the destiny of Chen Zhaode, a young man born on the island, to help Dachen get out of the mire.

Chen came up with the idea of breeding yellow croakers in 2012 after returning to his hometown. Starting from scratch, he didn't achieved success initially and lost more than 600,000 yuan ($89,552.2) in the first year.

But after several failures, the young man started to make fishing nets with a new kind of copper alloy material, which is rustproof and could withstand strong winds and waves.

Now, with his help, a large yellow croaker farm has been set up on the island, producing 2,070 tonnes of yellow croakers annually, two-thirds of the province's total.

Not only a fishing base, Dachen is also a hit tourism destination thanks to its rising transportation capacity.

Transportation linking the island with the city's mainland has been greatly improved. The travel time from Taizhou's Jiaojiang district to Dachen has been slashed to 65 minutes from four or five hours. In 2018, the island received 143,000 visitors, up by 14.4 percent year-on-year, and was designated a provincial holiday resort.

Meanwhile, local residents' income has also embraced strong growth as rural tourism booms on the island. Local residents' per capita disposable income reached 44,482 yuan last year, up 12 percent year-on-year, tripling that of 10 years ago, according to Ni Guozheng, deputy head of the Dachen Island Development Administrative Committee.