BEIJING, Dec 13: China will need to create 8 million new jobs next year to keep urban unemployment below an already increased level of 4.5 per cent, according to its labour minister, state press reported on Thursday.

Labour and Social Security Minister Zhang Zuoji told a national employment meeting in Shanghai China would “redouble its efforts” to create the jobs, the China Daily said.

Even if they were created, the urban jobless figure would be likely to rise to 4.5 per cent next year, from 3.4 per cent in 2001.

Foreign observers generally dismiss China’s unemployment statistics as hopeless understatements, but the upward trend indicates a tough battle ahead for China’s government to control jobless numbers.

The government expected further pressure to be created by job losses at state-owned enterprises, the China Daily added.

A large number lumbering state-owned firms are expected to be badly hit as China’s economy opens up following its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Tuesday.

Under the job creation plan, many of those laid off in urban areas could find work in labour-intensive service sectors such as domestic cleaning and milk delivery, the report said.

However the global economic downturn could create further problems, an economics minister said separately Thursday, predicting China could face “severe difficulties” in its first year as a WTO member.

China had joined the WTO when the world’s major economies were slowing down, said Zhang Zhigang, vice minister of the State Economic and Trade Commission.

“Such an economic situation will impose severe difficulties for our own economic growth next year,” he said.

Although trends can be discerned from changes in China’s unemployment figures, the actual figures are considered completely unreliable by independent economists.

Chinese statisticians do not count rural residents — who make up about 80 per cent of the population — as unemployed, even if they cannot find farming work.—AFP