Central government policies designed to speed up the development of China’s interior are having a major impact on the lives of rural households, according to a Xinhua report.

Government-subsidised loans and cash handouts amounting to Rmb45,000 have allowed 46-year-old farmer Wu Fangxiang in Yunnan province to demolish his decrepit home and build an eight-room property for his family. In fact, 80 per cent of householders in his village have done the same thing. Yunnan Kungan Cement and Building Materials Group, one of the companies encouraged by the local government to ‘reach the farmers’, believes that such actions will lead to a housing boom in the rural sector.

The central government’s policy to ‘take the domestic electric appliances to the farmers’, announced in late 2008 as part of a strategy to stimulate domestic demand, is also proving successful, according to the report. In Guangxi alone, one of 12 provinces and autonomous regions in the interior, 1.5m appliances were sold in the first seven months of this year, worth nearly Rmb3bn, almost 85 per cent of the planned total for the year.