Nationwide efforts over the past 10 years have provided the Chinese people with a substantial increase in both the quantity and quality of homes, as well as improvements in urban and rural environments, coupled with the steady development of related industries.

Bent on providing everyone in China with a roof over their head, the country invested a record 14.8 trillion yuan (about 2.14 trillion U.S. dollars) in affordable housing in the past decade, helping to settle over 140 million people in new homes, Jiang Wanrong, vice minister of housing and urban-rural development, told a press conference on Wednesday.

To the same end, China made 3.3 million affordable rental homes for young urbanites available since last year, with over 38 million low-income urban residents moving into public rental housing by the end of 2021, said Jiang.

The housing provident fund, established in 1991 to raise money to help the country's workforce purchase homes, has widened its coverage from 102 million people to 164 million over the decade, and includes over a million flexibly-employed people, official data shows.