BEIJING — China has built an extensive network of "road chiefs" across the country to take care of roads in rural areas.

By the end of June, the country had 641,000 "road chiefs," people in counties, townships, and villages who are in charge of local rural roads' maintenance and management, according to the Ministry of Transport (MOT).

The road chief scheme covered 95.2 percent of county-level governments tasked with managing rural roads. China has also introduced similar programs like "river chiefs" to beef up policy implementation.

Rural infrastructure development, especially building roads, has played an important role in vitalizing the rural areas.

MOT data showed that the mileage of rural roads increased more than 900,000 km from 2011 to 2021 to reach 4.466 million km by the end of 2021.