Full text: China's Rural Roads in the New Era

V. Smooth and Convenient Passenger and Freight Transport in Rural Areas

Dedicated to meeting people's growing desire for a better life, the Chinese government spares no effort in expanding the coverage of passenger and freight transport in rural areas and providing equitable access to transport services in both urban and rural areas. By doing so, it delivers smooth movement of people and goods, equal exchanges of production factors, and balanced allocation of public resources between urban and rural areas.

1. Making Travel More Convenient for Rural People

The Chinese government treats rural passenger transport as a core element of public services, and continues to improve it with the focus on ensuring equitable access, optimizing supply models, and establishing long-term mechanisms.

Providing all villages with access to bus services. To ensure easy access to bus services for every rural resident, local authorities have put in place extensive rural passenger transport networks that provide full coverage and connect urban and rural areas, with county seats as hubs, towns and townships as nodes, and administrative villages as terminuses. Adapted to local conditions, multiple models have been adopted, including regular buses (both gasoline and electric vehicles), shuttle buses, localized services, and booking-based operations. Connections between rural areas and between urban and rural areas have thus become closer. In the past decade, more than 1,100 towns and townships and 45,000 administrative villages have been newly integrated into the networks. As a result, all towns, townships and administrative villages where conditions allow have access to bus services.

Improving policies for sustainable development. Meeting a variety of travel needs, public passenger transport services in rural areas have extensive coverage and high operating costs. To ensure sustainability, a subsidy system has been established for vehicle purchase, platform development, and transport operations. New models have also been explored, such as promoting government purchase of services and providing subsidies on a performance basis. To ensure both service quality and cost efficiency in areas with low passenger volumes, flexible models adapted to local travel needs have been adopted, such as localized and booking-based operations.

Raising the quality of passenger transport services. To best meet rural residents' group-specific, periodic, and seasonal travel needs, innovative operational models of rural passenger transport have been devised. These include providing special services in busy periods for school commuting, for spring plowing, for fall harvesting, for trips to local fairs, and for tourism. In areas with a higher level of urbanization, bus lines have been extended into rural areas, and rural shuttle lines have been transformed into bus lines, to give urban and rural areas more equitable access to passenger transport services. 

Real-time monitoring devices have been installed on public passenger vehicles, and information systems have been built based on local conditions. Therefore, the accuracy and safety of rural passenger transport services have increased. Vehicle conditions have also improved notably. By the end of 2023, a total of 342,000 rural passenger vehicles were in service, with a steady increase in the proportion of new energy vehicles and middle- and high-range vehicles. Efficient, convenient and affordable rural passenger transport services have won public praise.

2. Expediting Logistics for Rural Areas

Through building nodes, expanding networks, and improving services, the government has exerted full efforts to shore up weaknesses and remove bottlenecks in rural logistics. Transport channels have been further widened for the two-way flow of goods between urban and rural areas, and to give villages access to e-commerce and express delivery, adding new momentum to the modernization of agriculture and rural areas.

Building nodes on rural logistics networks. China is working to coordinate logistics development in urban and rural areas, and increase financial support for building rural logistics nodes. By the end of 2023, local authorities had built 1,267 county-level delivery centers, making use of passenger and freight hubs, mail and delivery processing sites, the storage and logistics facilities of supply and marketing cooperatives, and e-commerce warehouses; they had also built 289,000 comprehensive delivery and logistics service stations in villages by utilizing local facilities and resources for postal services, courier delivery, supply and marketing, and e-commerce. The urban-rural framework of logistics service facilities has been improved, promoting smooth and efficient logistics between urban and rural areas. 

Creating innovative rural logistics service models. China has further integrated the development of rural logistics, passenger transport, postal services, and commerce. Special rural logistics service models have been tailored to local conditions, to raise the integration of rural logistics resources. To date, a total of 150 rural logistics brands have been created in steps, and new rural logistics service models have emerged, including the integration of passenger and freight transport networks, Online Freight Platforms Plus Rural Logistics, Local Industries Plus Rural Logistics, and E-commerce Plus Rural Logistics. These have spurred a rise in the comprehensive service capacity of rural logistics.

3. Achieving Greater Balance in Urban and Rural Transport

Coordinated measures have been taken to balance transport development across urban and rural areas. They have driven equitable access to transport services, expedited the flow of people and goods between urban and rural areas, and added new momentum to the development of county economies.

Optimizing the institutional framework for urban and rural transport development. As part of its well-conceived top-level design, China has issued the Guidelines on Steadily Advancing the Integration of Urban and Rural Transport and Improving Basic Public Services. The goal is to speed up the integration of urban and rural transport infrastructure, of urban and rural passenger transport, and of urban and rural freight transport and logistics, and create a favorable environment for the integration of urban and rural transport. China has established evaluation mechanisms, conducted annual evaluations, and subsequently taken targeted measures to promote the integration of urban and rural transport. The evaluations show that 93.6 percent of county-level administrative units have reached a good or even excellent level of urban-rural transport integration.

Strengthening connections between urban and rural transport networks. Urban and rural passenger transport networks have been integrated with key railway stations, airports and ferry terminals for easy connections and transfers, helping to improve the overall operation of urban and rural transport networks. To meet the development needs of agricultural industries, integrated urban and rural logistics delivery services have been realized. Based on the characteristics of rural industries, China has pressed ahead with the development of professional and comprehensive urban-rural logistics systems, particularly those for e-commerce, specialized delivery, and cold-chain delivery, to ensure more efficient flows of agricultural products. In an effort to integrate urban and rural transport services on the basis of the Urban-Rural Transport Plus paradigm, China has strengthened the integration of transport resources, promoted cross-sector integrated development, and advanced the coordinated development of roads, stations, passenger transport, freight transport, and mail delivery.

Accelerating the integration of rural passenger transport, freight transport, and mail delivery. To achieve sustainable operation of rural passenger transport, ensure rural access to delivery services, and coordinate the access of agricultural products to urban markets, the Chinese government has released the Guidelines on Accelerating the Integrated Development of Passenger Transport, Freight Transport, and Mail Delivery in Rural Areas. Following the principle of letting the government play a guiding role and the market a dominant role, China has further promoted the co-building and sharing of the operational mechanisms, infrastructure, lines and information, and strengthened the coordinated utilization of resources, in order to promote the integrated development of rural passenger transport, freight transport, and mail delivery (see Panel 8).

By the end of 2023, all provincial-level administrative units and more than 70 percent of cities at or above the prefectural level had established joint working mechanisms in which transport, postal, commerce, and supply and marketing departments are all participants. They had opened more than 11,000 integrated passenger, freight and mail lines, and built more than 90,000 service stations at county, township and village levels, establishing standard models such as "passenger transport vehicles carrying mail" and "freight and mail sharing the same networks". These have effectively consolidated rural access to bus services, and markedly lowered the costs and increased the efficiency of rural logistics and mail delivery, providing impetus for the vigorous development of rural e-commerce and industries.