Rural areas in China's capital are accelerating their urbanization process in terms of economic growth, social development, population quality, living standards of the people and infrastructure.

According to the rural urbanization evaluation team under the municipal statistical bureau, the process in Beijing's rural areas was at a medium level.

Surveys done by the team showed that production mode and livelihood of Beijing's rural dwellers exhibited an obvious trend of urbanization. They do not rely mainly on earnings from farming any longer, and they worked in enterprises and began to gain salaries. According to the local statistical bureau, farmers' per capita income topped 7,000 yuan (US$863) last year, of which more than two thirds were salaries.

By the end of 2004, the penetration ratio of telephones, cell phones and color TV sets had exceeded 100 percent for every 100 rural households in Beijing. They possessed 96 refrigerators, 96 washing machines, 26 microwave ovens, 47 air conditioners, 27 personal computers and eight motor vehicles.

The team also found that every farmer in Beijing's suburbs owned 34.2 square meters of housing on average and that the new medical care system covered 71.9 percent of all farmers there.

At the end of last year, there were 15,000 kilometers of highways in rural Beijing, per capita electricity consumption for daily use stood at 1,067 kilowatts, and clean energy supply covered 60.9 percent of the rural households.

(Xinhua News Agency November 17, 2005)