BEIJING - China's Ministry of Finance has allocated 1.5 billion yuan ($230.8 million) to support the improvement of rural environments in nine provincial-level regions in 2011, said a statement on the ministry's website.

The regions include Shanxi, Jilin, Anhui, Shandong, Henan, Guangxi, Gansu, Qinghai and Xinjiang, according to the statement released on Friday.

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The country's central government plans to spend 12 billion yuan on rural environmental protection from 2010 to 2012, a move expected to benefit 100 million rural residents, the Finance Ministry said in June 2010.

Many Chinese villages still have open sewers and garbage dumps, which has negatively impacted the health of the country's villagers and damaged the ecology of these villages.

To curb rural pollution, China set up a fund for rural environmental protection in 2008, with a combined 1.5 billion yuan from the central budget earmarked in 2008 and 2009.