Cheaper electricity may help power up rural consumption

On Feb 7, I drove nearly 1,000 kilometers home so as not to miss the chance of spending the most important family reunion occasion of the year - Spring Festival, which started the following day - at my home village in the southwest of Henan province in Central China.

I knew my elder brother bought a washing machine and an air conditioner early last year. While we chatted during the eve of the Lunar New Year, I learned he seldom kept the air conditioner running in the sweating summer or the coldest days of this winter, because he found it to be an excessively high electricity-consuming appliance. He virtually stopped using it after just a few days in the summer.

Actually, his decision to buy the home appliance was made in May last year, shortly after the price regulator with the Henan development and reform commission announced a so-called unification of the dual tracks of urban and rural electricity billing systems.