'Decisive victory' won in post-quake rebuilding
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A Chinese government official on Tuesday said victory has been achieved in the rebuilding of areas worst hit by a devastating earthquake three years ago in southwest China's Sichuan Province.
Mu Hong, Vice Director of the country's National Development and Reform Commission, said 95 percent of the post-quake reconstruction projects have been completed so far.
Mu made the remarks during a press conference that detailed the reconstruction of the Sichuan quake zones three years after an 8.0-magnitude quake struck.
The devastating quake centered in Wenchuan County in southwestern Sichuan on May 12, 2008 left 87,000 people dead or missing and millions homeless.
The quake also impacted the neighboring Shaanxi and Gansu provinces in northwest China, where after three years of reconstruction, new schools and hospitals have been built and living conditions improved.
China's State Council, the Cabinet, in September 2008 made a general plan to rebuild the 51 quake-struck county-level regions in these three provinces. The size of the reconstruction areas totaled nearly 130,000 square kilometers.
Wei Hong, executive vice governor of Sichuan Province, where the quake caused the most destruction, said at the press conference that the province has completed 94 percent of the rebuilding, in which nearly 3,000 new schools and more than 1,000 hospitals have been built or reconstructed.
The reconstruction investment in Sichuan so far has reached 796.5 billion yuan. The fund has also helped renovate and reinforced 3.55 million rural and urban homes in just one year after the quake. In two years, reconstruction of 1.5 million rural homes and 250,000 homes in cities were finished.
In Gansu, reconstruction investment totalling 25.5 billion yuan has helped rebuild and renovate nearly 700,000 rural homes, and reconstructed road have greatly improved rural transportation.
