China is taking a long look at how it plans small towns and villages, in a bid to save more farmland, upgrade rural infrastructure and protect farmers' interests.

Planning of the country's 81 percent of small towns and 62 percent of its villages is already completed.

The Ministry of Construction said Thursday it has moved to set up policies that would lead to better design in the future.

The country has 42,620 small towns in which 191 million people live. There are also roughly 3.6 million villages.

The ministry said in a press release that per capita housing has grown to 25.8 square meters as more than 600 million square meters are newly built every year.

Among these new residences, 67 percent were multiple-storey homes.

While the government's efforts are aimed at preserving arable land, officials at the ministry also warned that indiscriminate construction in small towns and villages is becoming a serious problem.

Some local governments consider new construction as a symbol of modernization and an asset to their career success. Many construction projects are unrealistic or of poor quality while taking up too much farmland and hurting farmers' interests.

"Construction planning in towns and villages should be based on the available resources and the surrounding environment," said the ministry.

Besides unreasonable development, unbalanced attention given to cities and villages is another barrier to development.

In February this year, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Construction chose 1,887 towns as models for other towns nationwide to follow.

(China Daily July 9, 2004)