China has made historical achievements in solving drinking water supply difficulty for the rural areas of the country. More than 60 million people in China's rural areas had been lifted out of drinking water shortage from 2000 to 2004, thanks to more than 800,000 newly-built water supply projects, according to a Xinhua report on October 13 in Nanning, Southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

During the past five years, China invested about 20 billion yuan, including 10.3 billion yuan of central government's treasury bonds plus local funds, in drinking water facilities construction, said Zhai Haohui, vice minister of Water Resources, at the 2005 national farmland and water conservancy construction conference in Nanning. As a result, various kinds of over 800,000 water supply projects have been built in the rural areas, solving water supply difficulty for more than 60 million people, according to People's Daily's overseas edition on October 14.

By People's Daily Online