China is promoting private businesses and other types of non-government economy in a bid to help improve the performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
More than 40,000 medium-sized and small SOEs had been transformed into non-government enterprises by the end of November, effectively preventing the loss of state assets, according to the State Administration of Industry and Commerce (SAIC).
During the transformation of SOEs, the government has actively drawn out policies to encourage private business to re-employ laid off workers.
More than 1.1 million laid off workers have found new jobs in non-government sections since the beginning of this year, greatly reducing the burden of SOEs, according to SAIC.
As China has restructured the state-owned sector in the process of developing a market economy over the past years, creating adequate employment opportunities for laid off workers has become a pressing issue.
The Chinese government has therefore given priority to developing private economy.
So far the country has 26.8 million registered self-employed workers, with a total registered capital of 332 billion yuan. There are also 1.7 million private enterprises in the country, with a total capital of 1.25 trillion yuan.
(Xinhua 12/21/2000)
