Non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) employed 70 million people, or 80 percent of China's total workforce in the industrial sector in 2008, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement Monday.

Despite the global economic downturn, non-state-owned industrial firms still hired 15 percent more people in 2008 than the previous year, the NBS said on its website.

Profits of these enterprises jumped 31.4 percent from 2007 while the figure for state-owned industrial firms dropped 16 percent.

There were 28 percent more non-state-owned industrial enterprises in 2008 than 2007.

The NBS gave no further details about the figures.

The non-public economy has developed rapidly since the State Council promulgated the first governmental document in 2005 to support and facilitate the growth of non-public enterprises.

According to the document, non-public enterprises enjoyed the same kind of market access with foreign capital and the same kind of treatment in project approval, financing, taxation, land use, foreign trade and economic cooperation as other businesses.

The number of people working in non-state-owned industrial firms had reached 70.4 million in 2008, a rise of 40 percent from 2005, said the statement.

Profits of non-state-owned industrial firms were up 160 percent in the four years to 2008. They represented more than 70 percent of the total profits created by Chinese industrial enterprises, up from 56 percent in 2005.

The number of non-SOEs in the industrial sector was up 65.7 percent from 2005 to 404,800 in 2008, accounting for 95 percent of the country's total industrial enterprises.

The statistics were based on industrial enterprises with annual sales revenue of more than 5 million yuan (732,064 U.S. dollars), said the statement.