Post Reply
1-9 of 9
Particularly to PRC do not talk about number but percentage please!
tanglinboy ( Date: 02-Feb-2009 22:02) Posted:
| ||||||||||
| 20m Chinese rural migrants jobless | ||
 | ||
by Marianne Barriaux BEIJING, Feb 2, 2009 (AFP) - China said Monday about 20 million rural migrants could not find work because of the global economic crisis, as it admitted mass job lay-offs were heightening concerns about social unrest. The figure marked a three-fold increase from numbers released by the government last month, indicating the slowdown in the world's third biggest economy was accelerating and thousands more factories had closed."Due to the economic downturn, about 20 million rural migrant workers have either lost their jobs or have not yet found employment and have gone home to the countryside," Chen Xiwen, a senior official, told reporters. "After returning to their village, what do they do about revenue'? About their lives? This is a new factor impacting this year's social stability," said Chen, director of a leading central government committee on rural issues. The revelation of millions more jobless came as Premier Wen Jiabao said China would take "extraordinary measures" to boost its economy beyond a 580-billion-dollar economic stimulus plan announced late last year. "All these measures have to be taken pre-emptively before an economic retreat," Wen told the Financial Times in an interview published Monday. China's communist leaders have long been concerned about the potential for social unrest among its roughly 800 million people who live in the nation's largely poor and polluted countryside. Before the crisis hit last year, about 130 million had left their homes to seek work in the more prosperous cities, often finding employment in labour-intensive industries that supplied the world with cheap consumer goods. But as the global crisis plunged China's traditional export markets in Europe and North America into recession, large numbers of workers have lost their jobs as their employers have closed or stopped production. Chen indicated the problem could be even worse than the headline number of 20 million rural migrant workers without jobs, as an average of six to seven million rural dwellers left their homes to find jobs in cities every year. With those people also likely to struggle to find work, Chen said "there will be fairly big pressure on employment for around 25 million rural residents". "So... ensuring employment and people's livelihood is ensuring rural stability," he said. The slowdown in the Chinese economy - which grew just nine percent in 2008 compared with 13 percent the previous year - has magnified a long-standing problem of a widening wealth divide between China's cities and countryside. China's cabinet on Sunday released a document acknowledging this, as it warned 2009 would be the "toughest year" since the turn of the century for the development of the countryside, according to the official Xinhua news agency. It said the top economic priority for the government this year was to give more support to rural areas. "The foundation for securing steady and relative fast economic growth is based upon agriculture. The toughest work of securing and improving people's livelihoods stays with farmers," the cabinet said. Partly to offset the growing problems in the countryside and stimulate rural economies, the cabinet announced 13-percent subsidies to all rural residents who bought televisions, fridges and a wide range of other home appliances. Subsidies would also be extended to a wider range of crops, as well as to farmers buying energy-efficient machinery, and to rural students from poor families, according to Xinhua. The government had already announced a range of other measures aimed at helping migrant workers unable to find jobs, including giving them vocational training and subsidies to set up their own businesses. It has also said it would extend basic healthcare cover in the countryside to cover a large majority of the population by 2011. |