China said yesterday that 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 previous 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 rural planning official, told reporters.
PHOTO: AP
“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,” Chen said.
The Chinese Communist Party has long been concerned about the potential for social unrest among its roughly 800 million people who live in the country’s largely poor and polluted countryside.
Before the crisis, about 130 million had left their homes to seek work in more prosperous cities, often finding employment in labor-intensive industries that supplied the world with cheap consumer goods.
But as the global crisis has 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 halted production.
Chen also said that an average of 6 million to 7 million rural dwellers left their homes to find jobs in cities every year, on top of the 20 million jobless workers.
“According to these calculations, there will be fairly big pressure on employment for around 25 million rural residents,” he said.
“So ... ensuring employment and people’s livelihood is ensuring rural stability,” Chen said.
The slowdown in the Chinese economy — which grew just 9 percent last year 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 economic growth slowed to 6.8 percent in the fourth quarter.
The Cabinet on Sunday released a document acknowledging this, as it warned this year would be the “toughest year” since the turn of the century for the development of the countryside, Xinhua news agency said.
Partly to offset the growing problems in the countryside and stimulate rural economies, the Cabinet announced subsidies to all rural residents who bought a wide range of home appliances.
The government has also already announced a number of measures aimed at helping migrant workers who are unable to find jobs, including giving them vocational training and subsidies to set up their own businesses.
The National Bureau of Statistics last month said the number of migrant workers who lost their jobs due to the crisis was about 6 million.
Chen said the 20 million figure was based on a recent agriculture ministry survey carried out in 150 villages in 15 different provinces before the Lunar New Year holiday.
Consumer spending during the Lunar New Year holiday, meanwhile, showed weaker growth than the same period last year as the overall economy slowed, state media reported yesterday.
Consumers spent 290 billion yuan (US$42.4 billion) nationwide during the week-long holiday, the Shanghai Securities News reported, citing the Commerce Ministry.
The figure, up 13.8 percent from the same period last year, remained strong, but slowed down from a 16 percent increase last year, when the country was hit by the worst winter weather in half a century.
The report attributed the holiday surge in consumer spending to aggressive price markdowns by retailers and government efforts to boost domestic demand.
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