Millions of Chinese jobless despite reemployment efforts -

Chinese TV Millions of Chinese workers laid off by economic restructuring remain jobless despite efforts to find them new employment, Chinese Central TV reported on Monday.

"As efforts to restructure China's economic system and state-owned enterprises intensify, the unemployment problem of workers laid off by some enterprises has become increasingly pronounced," the TV said.

"According to statistics, the total number of laid-off workers from state-owned, collective and foreign funded enterprises in various cities and towns has reached 20 million.

While 70 per cent of them have found jobs again, the remaining six million are still unemployed," it added.

The TV also cited statistics showing that the number of surplus workers who were laid off because of mergers and bankruptcy reached 1.4 million in 1997, "the highest in recent years".

"When we look back, because of the efforts exerted by various social sectors, over 4 million laid-off workers in the country found jobs again in 1997.

But we must also be aware that the state of joblessness remains very severe", the TV said .

It said the Chinese government was deeply interested in alleviating the plight of unemployed workers.

"People who are watchful of the operations of China's reemployment project in 1997 can see that passionate assistance could be observed in all social quarters," it said.

"We should say that workers have been laid off quite mercilessly because of the country's situation, but that these workers are also assisted with passion," the TV report concluded.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.