Under the new system of rural cooperative medical and health care services, China has raised the medical subsidies for rural residents from 200 yuan to 240 yuan per year per person.

Shuang Feng has more details about the system.

The new system has been on test run since 2003, and has covered almost all rural residents by 2008.

More than 97 per cent of the rural population has been covered by the basic medicare program for rural residents.

Statistics show that more than 830 million rural residents had joined the program by the end of 2011.

This year, the central government is also providing additional coverage of severe illnesses.

Health Minister Chen Zhu explains.

"The central government has raised the medical subsidies to 240 yuan, requiring local governments to establish a unified fund for treating severe illnesses. The fund also needs to be implemented with medical treatments, planning to raise the medial reimbursement rate to 90 per cent."

Meanwhile, the system aims to cover more diseases by the end of this year, including leukemia, congenital heart diseases and 6 other conditions.

Some regions will also be covered for cancers and vascular diseases.

Chen says this will greatly relieve people of their medical burdens, especially in rural areas where the number of people in one family tends to be bigger.

"Our experts predict the new system will benefit about 10 million families. Assume each family has an average of four to five people, about 40 to 50 million people will benefit from it."

Meanwhile, some 1.3 billion people in China have been covered by the basic medical insurance system.