Nation pushes renovation of aging residential areas

China is pushing forward a national initiative to renovate aging urban residential communities as a way of improving the living conditions of hundreds of millions of people as well as shoring up the economy.

Vice-Minister of Housing and Rural-Urban Development Huang Yan said on Monday at a news conference that as of the end of May, local governments had reported 170,000 urban communities in need of renovation, covering about 100 million residents.

Huang said many of the communities were built decades ago and several facilities are aging and crumbling.