In addition, governments at all levels should promote the construction of small towns and cities to provide "a reservoir" for the creation of job opportunities for surplus rural laborers, said Chen Xiwen, a senior researcher with the State Council Development Research Center, the central government's think-tank.

He said that this would allow more rural laborers to move from traditional agricultural production to jobs in manufacturing and service sector, an important step in the structural reform of rural employment.

An official with the National Bureau of Statistic also urged the government to speed up the structural reform of rural employment to help solve the problem of China's 100 million surplus rural laborers.

The number of surplus rural laborers in China is expected to increase by over 8 million a year over the next five years, said Fan Xiaoyu, an official from the bureau, who has been engaged in rural affairs statistics for several years.

The country had a total of 482 million rural laborers at the end of 2001, with 328 million of them engaged in agricultural production, according to figures provided by Fan.

Chinese experts have estimated that the country's WTO entry will result in a 20-million drop in the number of job vacancies for the nation's farmers.

"The problem of surplus rural laborers will be worse in major grain, cotton and oil-producing areas," said another agricultural expert who refused to be identified.

The government should promote training to expand farmers' work skills and their ability to adapt to the market economy, and should also help in the establishment of intermediate agencies to help farmers find jobs in the service sector, Fan said.

The government should continue to support the development of township enterprises so that they will employ more rural laborers, Fan said.

The nation's village and township enterprises currently employ 128 million rural workers.

Township enterprises are expected to provide about 10 million job openings for the country's redundant rural laborers between 2001 and 2005, according to a recently published official development plan.

The 10th Five-Year Development Plan for Township Enterprises states that the number of employees in the country's township enterprises is expected to hit 135 million by 2005, with annual increases of 2 million.

The plan states that to guarantee the steady growth of jobs 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.

(China Daily September 25, 2002)