Xinjiang building millions of houses able to resist quakes

The newly built earthquake-resistant houses in rural areas of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region have withstood more than 30 earthquakes of magnitude 5 or above in the past seven years, the region's housing authorities said.

As a quake-prone region, Xinjiang introduced a project to construct earthquake-resistant houses, which usually have two rooms and a kitchen, aiming to replace people's adobe houses with sturdier ones made of bricks and steel.

From 2011 to 2015, the autonomous region subsidized the construction of 1.5 million single-family houses for about 6 million farmers and herdsmen with an investment of 121 billion yuan ($17.5 billion), according to Xinjiang's Housing and Urban-Rural Development Department.