The housing conditions and living environment for urban and rural residents steadily improved over the past year. Housing construction has increased at an annual rate of 20 percent in the past few years. The per-capita housing area was 22.8 square meters by the end of 2002, and in rural areas it increased to 26.5 squaremeters. In urban areas privately owned housing makes up at least 72 percent. Ninety-four percent of the newly constructed houses inurban areas were purchased by individuals. The standards for house decoration, decoration quality, indoor air quality and housing environment are rising steadily.

    In the meantime, China made continuous efforts to solve the food and clothing problem of the impoverished population. The state input for development-oriented poverty reduction programs inrural areas increased from 24.8 billion yuan in 2000 to 29.9 billion yuan in 2003. This input was used to improve the production conditions for agriculture and animal husbandry in impoverished areas, to build roads, to spread compulsory educationand eliminate illiteracy, to train farmers in practical technology,to prevent and cure endemic diseases, to construct farm fields, tobuild water conservancy projects and to provide drinking water forboth people and animals. The per-capita income of farmers in the major poor counties that the government aims to help increased from 1,277 yuan at the end of 2001 to 1,305 yuan in 2003, and the size of the impoverished population without adequate food and clothing in rural China decreased from 250 million at the beginning of China's reform and opening-up program in 1978 to 29 million in 2003.

    China attaches great importance to protecting the health and safety of its citizens. In 2003, faced with the sudden outbreak of the SARS epidemic, the Chinese Government made the people's healthand safety its top priority. It adopted a series of resolute and effective measures, including the promulgation of the "Emergency Regulations on Public Health Contingencies" and "Measures for the Prevention and Treatment of the Infectious Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome," timely release of information on SARS cases,and improvement of the SARS case reporting system and measures for prevention and control of the epidemic. State leaders went to SARS-affected regions many times to investigate the epidemic conditions and console SARS patients as well as doctors and nurses, and mobilized the whole nation to join in the fight against SARS. The central and local governments earmarked more than 10 billion yuan to purchase medical equipment, medication and protective gear, andto reconstruct hospitals. SARS patients, both farmers and towns people who had financial difficulties, were treated free of charge, making sure that all SARS patients were given hospital treatment. These measures effectively reduced the death rate of confirmed SARS patients on the Chinese mainland to 6.5 per-cent, lower than the world's average of nine percent. (more)