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

Huzhou's Wuxing and Nanxun districts have recently been recognized as national exemplars in rural road construction, marking Huzhou as the first city in the nation to achieve this distinction across all its administrative areas.

Presently, Huzhou has a total rural road length of 7,296 kilometers, constituting 88.7 percent of the city's overall road network. Impressively, 92.8 percent of administrative villages in the city now have access to dual-lane roads. 

In 2014, Huzhou pioneered the "road chief" system, assigning officials at each level of government to oversee the roads in their respective areas, a first-of-its-kind initiative in China.

The interconnected rural road network has invigorated and enriched Huzhou's rural areas. By the close of 2023, official data revealed that the average annual collective economic income of villages in Huzhou reached 4.01 million yuan ($554,631), with 90 percent reporting an annual operating income exceeding 800,000 yuan. In addition, the per capita disposable income of rural residents in Huzhou totaled 19,044 yuan last year, narrowing the urban-rural income ratio to 1.57.

An official from the Huzhou Municipal Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs remarked, "Huzhou has emerged as one of the regions with the narrowest income gap between urban and rural residents in the country, with the rural road network playing an indispensable role."