Many people may have marvelous memories of exquisite ancient rooftops and pavilions crisscrossed by watercourses - a stereotypical portrait of riverside settlements in China.

But it doesn't feel so good to think that many local people drink that water, and also wash and dump sewage there.

The eastern province of Jiangsu, in an ambitious move to benefit rural residents, is planning to extend a tap water network to every rural family in an area almost half the size of Britain.

In 2000 the province launched a trial scheme in Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou to link tap water pipes to neighboring rural families.

By the end of last year some 2,379 villages around the three cities had access to fresh tap water, benefiting more than 5.6 million rural residents. Many low quality rural water plants were subsequently shut down.

Jiangsu is now implementing the program in the whole province, which will end the long history of rural people having to drink from rivers, pools and wells.

As vice-minister of construction Qiu Baoxing hailed when inspecting the program, Jiangsu's initiative will be a good example for other provinces to follow.

Besides hygienic guarantee, the integrated supply of tap water will curb excessive use of underground water resources which have been running wild in rural areas with the digging of deep wells.

The charged tap water may also prod rural residents into reducing waste of the precious liquid. Sewage disposal services will also grow in rural areas to help cultivate a clean environment.

However, to introduce the integrated water supply system nationwide is by no means an easy job.

China has 786 million rural residents. If the rural tap water service ends up covering only 20 per cent of them, it is equivalent to watering more than seven times the entire population of Australia.

Aside from the astronomical amounts of capital and daunting technical pitfalls involved in laying water pipes across the country's vast territory, the shortage of water alone is a big problem.

Some regions simply do not have enough drinkable water for local people and animals.

Although tap water is taken for granted in cities, only 16.79 per cent of China's villages have basic water supply facilities.

Only a few rich and water-abundant provinces, including Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong, have integrated rural areas into local tap water networks.

But there is reason to believe the scheme to provide tap water for rural people is not an illusion.

The idea to build rural tap water systems not only comes amid an overall economic boom nationwide, but at a time when the country is unprecedentedly concerned with the growing gap between rich and poor.

Tap water service is only a thin edge of the wedge compared to the country's plan to improve the obsolete transport and energy infrastructures as well as education and health care services in rural areas.

The scenario is that China's rural areas will have every basic facility urbanites enjoy in addition to cultural heritage and nature.

Despite all the technical challenges lying ahead, that day is fast approaching.

(China Daily May 13, 2004)