China will invest 100 billion yuan (US$12 billion) from 2006 to 2010 to build more rural highways, said Zhang Chunxian, minister of Communications, in Beijing on Sunday.

At a yearly national communications meeting, Zhang said all administrative villages in China will be connected by highways at the end of 2010.

According to statistics from the transportation department, 123 towns and 11,200 villages have built highways in 2004. About 250,000 kilometers of highways have been upgraded to expressways and 130,000 kilometers of bituminous and cement roads are newly built.

With 8,500 buses running, farmers from 286 towns and 28,424 villages can easily go out.

The ministry works hard on building a bus network in rural areas, Zhang said. "Building highways in rural areas are the most beneficial to farmers."

The ministry's statistics show China has built 352,000 kilometers rural highways in 2003 and 2004, including 192,000 kilometers of bituminous and cement roads, surpassing the total mileage that it built in the 53 years since new China was founded in 1949.

However, roads in many rural areas are still very bad, and building highways for all China's villages is difficult, as it requires money, technology and support from local governments.

Zhang said the ministry will try its best to build highways on top of existing roads and not over farmland.

(Xinhua News Agency December 27, 2004)