China's Ministry of Water Resources and the National Development and Reform Committee have announced a plan to spend more than 1.8 billion yuan on safe drinking water for around 4 million rural people in Hebei province this year, as part of its goal of giving everyone access to safe drinking water by 2015.

The project will cover 3.24 million rural people in general and 731,800 rural teachers and students. The central government will cover 1.11 billion yuan and the province government, 730 million yuan. The plan calls for people in areas with a serious water scarcity or seriously polluted water to be given priority at first. The work needs to be accurate and have sufficient capital to ensure high-quality drinking water for villages and rural schools.

The original plan started in since 2005 and has provided safe water for about 21.5 million rural people, but, by the end of 2012, about 15.6 million others were still suffer from a lack of drinking water, and the government wants to solve that problem in two years.