20000221Jobless pressure building in Chinese countryside

SHANGHAI: China is facing more unemployment pressure in rural areas where the workforce will hit 600 million people by 2005, the official China Daily's Business Weekly said on Sunday.

China had a pressing need to create jobs in both the countryside and urban areas for rural labourers, the newspaper said.

It quoted the Ministry of Agriculture as saying 9.98 million more people would join the rural workforce each year for the next five years, compared with an annual increase of 7.63 million in the past five years.

The rural workforce would increase to 616.22 million by 2010 and 620.57 million by 2015, the newspaper said.

But demand for rural labourers in the traditional agriculture sector is expected to fall to 168 million by 2005 from 348 million in 1998, it said.

With the drop in demand, rural labourers are likely to flock to the cities, creating more urban unemployment, the newspaper quoted experts as saying.

China's present population is about 1.25 billion people.

China has said it aimed to cap its urban jobless rate at below 3.5 percent in 2000, compared with 3.1 percent in 1999.

But analysts have said China's actual unemployment might be higher than official figures, which grossly underestimate the large numbers of rural workers flowing to the cities in search of jobs. -Reuters