At present, funding from the central and provincial governments accounts for 54 percent of the total investment on rural highway construction. Local governments are responsible for the rest of the funding.

To support rural highway construction, many ordinary people have voluntarily made donations to the projects, which would bring welfare to them in turn.

Xinye County, for example, has 220 people each donating more than 10,000 yuan (US$1,250). A farmer named Li Shuanggong, who does business outside the county, donated 370,000 yuan.

A family surnamed Jia in Wuyang County donated more than 2 million yuan to build highways connecting to the door of each household in the village.

"Rural highways are an important part of the highway network and their mileage accounts for more than 80 percent of the province's total," said an official with the provincial communications bureau.

"As a strategic infrastructure for building new countryside, rural highway construction will always receive top priority," he said.

By the end of 2005, all of the province's townships and 63.5 percent of the villages had been connected with cement/asphalt highways.

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