Rural electrification in China: A policy and institutional analysis

The low level electrification in rural China could be ascribed to lack of supporting policies, weak institutional frameworks and limited financing channels. Over the past three decades, Chinese government has been making various efforts in both policies and financing to improve rural electrification. Thus, remarkable achievements have been made in this field. The rural electrification rate has exceeded 99 percent and the electricity demand of production and living has been basically met. The rural economy and society, infrastructures and eco-environment have been significantly improved thanks to the electrification development. Also, the gap of electrical facilities between the urban and the rural has been narrowed. However, there are still 936,000 farmer households or 3.86 million rural residents have no access to electric power supply. The institutional defects and delayed institutional reform in rural electrification have seriously impaired effects of the electric power policies. Thus, it is still a long way to go for China to set up a sound institutional framework, financing policies and vigorous county-level electric power supply enterprises.