China's small towns reached 19,234 last year in number, a rapid expansion from 5,400 in 1954, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development said Sunday.

The towns have become an important carrier for rural growth and employment and are important in providing public services to the country's vast rural areas, the ministry said.

An official with the ministry said the country had gradually established a system of coordinated development between big and medium-sized cities, and smaller towns.

The country now has three big regions with high concentration of towns dotted around big cities, namely the Yangtze River Delta region, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and the Pearl River Delta region.

There are also a dozen other such urban agglomerations of smaller scale, such as the central plains, Shandong Peninsula, Wuhan, and the southwestern Chengdu-Chongqing region, which have driven local economies.

In 2008, the country's fixed asset investment in municipal spending reached 724 billion yuan (US$106 billion), 502 times the level in 1980, according to the ministry.

(Xinhua News Agency October 5, 2009)