Fifty-seven percent of laidoff workers in Chongqing, China's largest municipality in the southwest, have found jobs in the private sector over the past three years.

More than 30,000 laid-off workers have found jobs in private enterprises this year alone, according to local officials.

As a major old industrial base in southwest China, Chongqing boast a workforce of some 2.78 million employed by the state-owned enterprises. But the officials said that some 400,000 have been laid off since 1997.

In contrast, private economy has maintained a strong growth momentum in recent years, and some 1.4 million people working in 503,000 self-employed businesses and 250,000 private enterprises. Their registered capital totaled 24.8 billion yuan (2.98 billion U. S. dollars).

The municipal government has adopted some preferences to encourage private economy, which include reducing tax, optimizing fund-raising channels and improving market order, they said.

The private economy has been growing fast since China began its opening to the outside world in the late 1970s.

By late 1998, there had been 1.2 million private businesses employing some 17 million people. They had 1.02 trillion yuan in registered capital, produced 585.3 billion yuan in output value, and did 532.3 billion yuan worth of business.