China has launched a program to transform police stations nationwide over the next three years and make them uniform in appearance for a more standardized management of the police force, the Ministry of Public Security said on Thursday.

"More than 2,000 police stations in the poor western regions, which will be built with central government input, will take on the same 'outfit'," the Ministry said on its website.

At present, the images of local police stations vary in different parts of the country, which makes it hard for the public to distinguish them from other buildings.

The Ministry specified the appearance of future police stations in April last year, fixing police blue and white as the essential colors of the buildings, and stipulating that the doors, eaves and facades of police stations across the country must be the same.

The public security bureaus in Jinan, capital city of East China's Shandong Province, and in Gu'an County in north China's Hebei Province, were set as the pilot areas to carry out the program in 2005.

And the program is going smoothly in municipalities and regions including Tianjin municipality in north China, Henan, Liaoning, Jiangsu and Fujian provinces respectively in central, northeastern and eastern China.

China now boasts more than 40,000 police stations in its 31 provinces, regions and municipalities, according to the Ministry.

Source: Xinhua