China Official Says 20 Million Migrants Have Lost Jobs

About 20 million migrant workers have lost their jobs because of the economic downturn, a senior official said on Monday, after the government warned that rising unemployment could fuel social unrest.

Eugene Hoshiko / AP People walk at a shopping street Tuesday, May 1, 2007 in Shanghai, China. May Day, on May 1, is traditionally the day socialist countries honor their workers, but in modern communist China the day kicks off a week-long Golden Week holiday which the government hopes will encourage its citizens to travel and spend, thereby boosting the economy. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Chen Xiwen, Director of the Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, told a news conference on Monday that official surveys found that about 15.3 percent of the total migrant labour pool working in cities had returned jobless to the countryside.

"It's fair to say that the Chinese government takes very seriously the issue of employment of rural migrant workers," he said.

The unemployment figures were based on an agricultural ministry survey of 165 villages in 15 provinces, he said. The survey was conducted before the Lunar New Year holiday, when people traditionally return home, that was celebrated in the last week of January.

Chen, who advises Chinese Communist Party leaders on policies for the country's 750 million-strong farming population, was speaking a day after the government issued its first big policy document for 2009, which as in past years was devoted to rural development.

This year's document had a sobering warning about damage to the vast and still mostly poor countryside from the global financial crisis.

"At present, the international financial crisis continues to spread, its negative impact on our country's economy has been deepening by the day, and the shocks to agricultural and rural development are constantly emerging," said the document.

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The year would be "extremely arduous" for making gains to the lives and incomes of farmers, it said.

China's economic growth slumped to 6.8 percent in the last quarter, dragging down the pace of expansion for all of 2008 to a seven-year low of 9.0 percent as the full force of the global financial crisis struck home.

A wave of factory shutdowns in the wake of falling exports has felled millions of jobs and pressed down the wages of those who have hung on to work, adding to worries among officials about a rise in social unrest.

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