BEIJING - China's central government will invest 5.5 billion yuan ($873 million) this year to clean up pollution in the country's rural areas, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) said Monday.

The special funding by the central government will mainly go to clean-up projects in villages with major amounts of discharged pollutants, hamlets along the polluted Liaohe, Huaihe and Songhua rivers, as well as "cancerous villages" where the health of farmers has been threatened.

The central and local governments will increase the investment to complete environmental clean-ups among 60,000 villages across the country by 2015, according to the MOF statement.

Since 2008, the Chinese central government has allocated 8 billion yuan in funds while local governments have invested another 9.7 billion yuan in environmental rehabilitation projects in 16,300 villages. These projects have benefited 42.34 million people.