A view of a rural road in Huzhou, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/hz66.com]

The "road chief" system adopted by Huzhou to strengthen management on rural roads made the list of the 15 best cases of rural road management in China, which was recently released by the Ministry of Transport.

Huzhou in East China's Zhejiang province started implementing the "road chief" system, which sees officials at each level of government take charge of the roads in their area, in 2014. It was the first city in China to do so.

More than 2,600 officials from the city have been appointed as "road chiefs" in rural areas to date, according to official data.

In 2021, the road inspection frequency of traffic enforcement officers in Huzhou increased by 4.8 percent compared with 2018, but the number of problems found decreased by 57.8 percent.

In addition, the medium quality index (MQI) of the city's rural road hit 94.42 percent last year after surpassing 90 percent in 2017.

Huzhou has built or renovated 187.6 kilometers of roads in its rural areas so far this year, and the length is expected to hit 220 kilometers by the end of October, two months earlier than the target set by the government.

In 2021, Huzhou became the first city in Zhejiang to have all its administrative areas honored as provincial models in rural road construction. Among them, Anji county, Changxing county and Deqing county have been honored as national models in rural road construction.