Special interview with Director of Chenzhou Municipal Rural Work Department- Zhu Xiaodang

“There were 20,000 villager groups in Chenzhou city. Taking 3 new houses to be built every year in each group with 0.25 million yuan investment of each house, the total amount would be hit 15 billion yuan for the rural housing projects in Chenzhou city. It is an important and serous question for all the cadres to think it over that how to manage such large amount.” said Zhu Xiaodang- Director of Chenzhou Municipal Rural Work Department.

Six reform measures concerned for overall development of urban and rural areas were issued in 2013 in Chenzhou city. As one of the key measures, regulation for rural housing management was launched in advance. A series of methods adopted by Chenzhou Municipal Rural Work Department to promote the rural housing management were never used in Hunan province even China before. It was introduced by Zhu Xiaodang that a number of housing demonstration sites with more concentrated population, better public service condition and sound ecological condition were forged by the department first, which inspired the villagers to be impressed with the idea that their houses should be built as this way. In 2013, every counties and districts of Chenzhou were planned to build a concentrated housing demonstration site with over 50 houses. Such kind of promotion would be expressed to every towns and villages of Chenzhou city next year.

Concerning for the capitals for the housing issue, Zhu said that there was no special capital support available in Chenzhou city for this issue, so now the key method handled out by the municipal government was to encourage the county governments to innovate more measures to collect the capitals and support the rural housing projects. But Zhu also stated that the department was trying to get Chenzhou municipal financial fund support to subsidy the families which build their houses in the planning area with specified standards. At the mean time, more supports would be granted for renovating dilapidated houses in rural areas, resettling immigration hedge, etc.