On Tuesday, China published the results of its first national economic census that provides basic information about the country's secondary and tertiary industries.

Published jointly by the State Council's Leading Group of First National Economic Census and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the results contain information on legal entities, industrial entities and privately-owned businesses.

Census results show that 308.82 million people were employed in the secondary and tertiary industries at the end of 2004, 154.638 million people in the secondary industry and 154.19 million in the tertiary industry.

Further, 214.6 million people, or 69.5 percent of the total employed in the secondary and tertiary industries, work in corporate businesses and 94.224 million people are private business owners, accounting for 30.5 percent of the total.

Among the people employed, 78.822 million, or 36.7 percent, are women.

The manufacturing sector employs 83.905 million people, accounting for 39.1 percent in the total employed; the construction sector 27.926 million, 13.0 percent; the wholesale and retail sector 13.825 million people, or 6.4 percent of the total employed.

China had 39 million privately-run businesses in secondary and tertiary industries as of the end of 2004, 5.887 million in the secondary industry and 33.329 million in the tertiary industry, according to the census.

These businesses employed 94.224 million people, or 30.5 percent of the total workforce in the secondary and tertiary industries.

Most of the privately-owned businesses were in the areas of transportation, wholesale and retail sales, catering and services.

The number of privately-run industrial businesses was 5.323 million, accounting for 13.6 percent of the total. Those engaged in the transportation sector numbered 6.217 million, or 15.9 percent of the total.

Privately-owned wholesale and retail sales businesses accounted for 18.311 million, making up 46.7 percent of the total, while those engaged in the catering and service industries stood at 2.939 million and 4.138 million, accounting for 7.5 percent and 10.6 percent of the total, respectively.

The census also showed that foreign investment in China reached 1.6 trillion yuan (US$198 billion) at the end of 2004, or 8.7 percent of the country's total enterprise paid-in capital.

Paid-in capital refers to investment paid in by the investors in the forms of currency, material investment or intangible assets. Paid-in capital can be divided into government capital, collective capital, individual capital, capital from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and foreign capital.

Capital from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan accounts for 7.3 percent in the total paid-in investment or 1.3 trillion yuan (US$161 billion).

At the end of 2004, the paid-in capital of 3.25 million corporate people in the secondary and tertiary industries reached 18.2 trillion yuan (US$2.25 trillion).

For paid-in capital, government investment was 8.7 trillion yuan (US$1.07 trillion), accounting for 48.1 percent of the total; collective investment was 1.4 trillion yuan (US$173 billion), accounting for 7.9 percent; personal investment was 5.1 trillion yuan (US$631 billion), accounting for 28 percent.

The data quality of the first national economic census met the expected goal with an error rate of merely 4.9 per thousand, according to NBS.

The leading group of the census under the State Council did a spot check on data collected in 31 regions, including information from 21,731 corporate people and industrial enterprises, or 3.0 per thousand of the total in the census, as well as 45,623 privately-owned businesses or 1.1 per thousand of the total included in the census.

The spot check shows that the data quality met the expected goal, according to NBS.

This first-ever national economic census, which formally began on December 31, 2004, was designed to give an economic overview of the country's fast-expanding secondary and tertiary industries and complete a database covering all economic sectors.

The census results were also expected to help policy-makers and experts to have a better understanding of the overall situation of the two sectors so as to help policy-makers draft the country's economic and social development program during the next Five-Year Guideline period (2006-10) and formulate macro-regulation policies and industrial readjustment and restructuring.

Nearly 10 million statisticians and volunteers completed the registration of 5 million corporate people, 4 million industrial enterprises and more than 30 million privately-owned enterprises during the census, according to NBS.

The survey covers such economic sectors as construction, transportation and scientific research. It collects information on staff size, financial conditions and productivity management.

(Xinhua News Agency December 7, 2005)