As part of efforts to boost rural vitalization, the city of Taixing in East China's Jiangsu province is expanding its network of natural gas pipelines to residents in the surrounding countryside.

In line with its "Village to Village Connection" project, which views the supply of natural gas as one way of lifting people's living standards, workers in Taixing have connected 280 out of 305 administrative villages with the clean fuel supply, representing a connectivity rate of 91.8 percent.

Sun Li, an on-site engineer in the Taixing unit of China Gas Holdings, said that, to date, a total of 6,177 kilometers of gas pipelines have been laid in Taixing, weaving an energy network that covers both rural and urban areas.

Sun said the total number of gas users in the area is about 386,000, with pipeline gas users now surpassing 95 percent of that total, or about 370,000 households.

With clean energy now reaching the vast majority of households, the happiness of residents in rural areas is improving, and their quality of life and sense of security are steadily rising, injecting strong momentum into rural vitalization, he added.

Sun said that his team's next focus will be on increasing the coverage and installation of gas pipelines in dispersed residential areas and scattered households, so that every rural resident can use safe and economical pipelined natural gas as soon as possible.

Please contact the writer at hanjingyan@chinadaily.com.cn