BEIJING, Sept 20: China is preparing to send more farmers to Africa as rural labourers find it increasingly difficult to find jobs in the nation’s urban centres, state press reported.

At a meeting in southwest China’s Chongqing city, the head of China’s Export-Import Bank Li Ruogu pledged to help finance African emigration as part of the city’s urbanisation scheme, the People’s Daily reported on its website.

“With the establishment of the (rapid urbanisation) project, several million farmers will have to move,” the paper quoted Li as saying on Tuesday.

“Chongqing can organise a group of the rural workers and send them to Africa to open up agricultural lands. The China Export-Import Bank will fully support this with investment, project development and product sales.” China’s Commerce Ministry on Thursday refused to say how many contracted Chinese workers have been sent to Africa, but according to state press reports, up to 200,000 Chinese-born mainlanders currently live in South Africa alone.

Meanwhile, according to the Beijing Youth Daily, there are about 7,000 farmers from northern China’s Hebei province who are tilling the soil in 18 African nations.

Li said the bank had a good track record with numerous agricultural projects on the African continent. Li was in Chongqing to offer foreign trade support as part of central government efforts to boost the city’s urbanisation scheme that hopes to bring 12 million farmers into the region’s urban areas by 2020.

China is currently undergoing an unprecedented urbanisation process with up to 150 million rural migrant workers finding work in urban centres over the last 20 years or so and nearly the same amount expected to descend on cities in coming decades.—AFP