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 (106 billion U.S. dollars), 502 times the level in 1980, according to the ministry.