China's township enterprises will provide about 10 million job openings for the country's redundant rural labor between 2001 and 2005, according to a recently published official development plan.
The Tenth Five-Year Development Plan for Township Enterprises in the capital of north China's Henan Province said that the number of employees in China's township enterprises was expected to hit 135 million by 2005, with annual increases of 2 million.
To guarantee the steady growth of employees in township enterprises, the plan states that relevant governmental departments should consolidate their input into township enterprises, while the enterprises should speed up their industrial adjustment, branch into the service sector, optimize and improve secondary industry and speed up the development of primary industry.
Currently, there is a labor pool of 470 million in rural China, of which about 160 million are unemployed.
Over the past five years, the proportion of income drawn by farmers from township enterprises has increased 4 percent above their per capita net income.
Between 1978 and 2000, with an annual capacity of about 6 million employees, township enterprises has become a major employment option for the country's extra rural labor.
The ratio between rural residents practicing farming and those undertaking non-agricultural business was previously 9.3 to 0.7 and is now 6.1 to 3.9.
(China Daily November 9, 2001)
