The private sector has blossomed into an increasingly powerful force for economic growth in east China's Jiangxi and Zhejiang provinces.

Private entrepreneurs in Jiangxi Province paid 2.83 billion yuan in taxes last year, a rise of 21.5 percent over 1998 and accounting for 18.1 percent of the total provincial fiscal revenues for 1999.

In addition, more than 70,000 workers laid off from state-owned enterprises in Jiangxi were re-employed in private enterprises or became self-employed last year.

Jiangxi's 10,654 privately owned companies with limited liabilities have registered assets of 9.79 billion yuan in total, and these companies account for 41.9 percent of all local private firms.

Local private undertakings in the province exported 650 million yuan worth of goods in 1999, six times the 1998 figure, and invested 300 million yuan on 68 technology-innovation projects andnearly 180 million yuan to develop new products.

Jiangxi Province now has 45 privately owned hi-tech enterprises involving 70 million yuan of total investment.

In neighboring Zhejiang Province, the number of private enterprises engaged such fields as machinery, chemicals, bio-chemicals, and electrical facilities, has reached around 600.

Private entrepreneurs in Zhejiang are giving priority to technology improvement and market share increase as new strategiesto further develop the private sector.

Private enterprises in Zhejiang spent 4.95 billion yuan on technology upgrading last year, 5.1 times the 1998 level, and 966 million yuan to develop new products, almost double the 1998 figure.