China makes notable achievements in rural road construction: white paper

BEIJING -- China has made notable achievements in the construction of rural roads, with increased total length, rising technical standards and better accessibility, said a white paper released by China's State Council Information Office on Friday.

The white paper, titled "China's Rural Roads in the New Era," said that by the end of 2023, the total length of rural roads reached 4.6 million kilometers, an increase of 21.7 percent over 2013, enough to circle the equator 115 times.

So far, the country has put in place a rural transport infrastructure network in which county roads connect rural and urban areas, township roads crisscross, and village roads facilitate travel between households and farmland, the white paper said.

Roads have been built with higher technical standards across the country's rural areas. By the end of 2023, graded rural roads in China amounted to 4.45 million kilometers, with its share in total rural roads reaching 96.8 percent, up 11.9 percentage points over the past 10 years.

Paved roads measured 4.22 million kilometers and accounted for 91.8 percent of total rural roads, representing an increase of 27.2 percentage points over the past decade.

The white paper also highlighted increasing accessibility in rural areas, citing that paved roads have been built in about 30,000 towns and townships and over 500,000 administrative villages.

China has built paved roads in rural tourist destinations, industrial parks, sources of resources and minerals, and other points of economic growth, which has made travel in remote areas and particularly in mountainous areas more convenient, according to the white paper.