"Keeping a clean environment is an important element of building a new socialist countryside," says Gao Shenghua.

Central government's spending on toilet renovations has risen from 107 million yuan in 2004 to 300 million yuan in 2008. The target is to raise the penetration of sanitary toilets to 65 percent by 2015. Right now, the spread of sanitary toilets in the rural areas of Shanxi is 16 percent.

Both officials and villagers have to counter a series of challenges.

The most troublesome is funding. Without sufficient funding from outside, says Gao Zhiping, he cannot renovate the toilet himself as the expense is not a small amount for his family of four, who earn less than 3,000 yuan a year from his one hectare of land.

On average, it costs nearly 1,000 yuan to renovate a toilet, but the central government only sets aside 350 yuan per toilet, and provincial and local governments are obliged to contribute.

But most of the local governments of Shanxi are short of revenue, especially after tax reforms in the 1990s. Some officials believe that clean toilets are less important than introducing investment.

More embarrassing is the position of the Patriotic Health Campaign Committee, which has the responsibility of overseeing the sanitation work.

In the mid-1950s, Chairman Mao Zedong initiated a movement to "pay attention to the sanitation, fight against the bacteria and improve health," and the Patriotic Health Campaign Committee was thus founded.

Throughout the 1950s, the Chinese were engaged in cleaning up their homes and communities, and both the countryside and cities took on a new look in a short time.

But the committee's functions have been sidelined over the past decades, and it has become an institution with no substantial power. For example, there are no specially assigned personnel on many lower-level committees, says Gao Shenghua.

But Gao, who has worked on the provincial committee for 26 years, is determined to push ahead. "A person can hardly be deemed healthy if a single cell is ill, and the new socialist countryside won't be realized without clean toilets in the backyard," she says confidently.

(Shanghai Daily March 9, 2009)