Nearly a quarter of household garbage and 80 percent of domestic sewage in rural areas are untreated amid challenges in improving the living environment, said Yu Xinrong, vice minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, at a press conference on Saturday.

Yu said, despite remarkable progress, people’s living environment in rural areas is still significantly backward compared with the city.

Less than half of rural families use “sanitary" toilets. China's national standard requires "sanitary" toilets in rural homes to have walls, roofs, doors and windows and to be at least two square meters in size. They may be flush toilets or dry toilets with underground storage tanks.

China has released a five-year plan on its rural vitalization strategy, the first of its kind, mapping out a number of major projects, programs and actions.

Yu said Chinese villages still suffer from problems such as poor road conditions, shabby toilets, dirty environment, and undeveloped basic public services. The five-year plan has identified six campaigns to address these problems and improve rural people’s living conditions.