China to Create More Jobs for Rural Workers

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, February 27, 2002

China to Create More Jobs for Rural Workers

The Ministry of Agriculture has pledged to speed up the structural reform of rural employment to help solve the problem of China's surplus rural workforce of 100 million.

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The Ministry of Agriculture has pledged to speed up the structural reform of rural employment to help solve the problem of China's surplus rural workforce of 100 million.

Xue Liang, director of the ministry's Development Planning Department, Tuesday delivered a report to the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislative body, on how the ministry will meet the opportunities and challenges brought by China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The ministry will work to bring labor-intensive industries suchas animal breeding and aquaculture into full play to create more job opportunities for farmers, according to Wednesday's China Daily.

It also vowed to promote the construction of small towns and cities, making them "a reservoir" for the creation of job opportunities for surplus rural laborers.

The problem of surplus rural laborers will become even more serious in major grain, cotton and oil-producing areas, and the country's WTO entry will lead to 20 million fewer job vacancies for the nation's farmers, Xue said.

Statistics from the Ministry show that the country had a total of 480 million rural workers at the end of 2000, with 328 million of them engaged in agricultural production and the number of surplus rural laborers is expected to increase by over eight million a year over the next five years.

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