Gu Xiulian, a vice-chairman of the federation made the remark in Beijing at yesterday's opening of a three-day symposium on the relationship between the media and young girls, attended by over 130 local and overseas experts.

The meeting is co-sponsored by the federation and UNICEF.

The Chinese government has made great efforts in developing the welfare of female children, said Gu, who is also a deputy director of the State Council's Work Committee on Women and Children.

The committee has held many meetings to deal with a number of key issues concerned, including the issue of abandoning or drowning female infants, health care of young girls, and the building of children's welfare houses, according to the official.

Currently, China has set up a three-level health care network for children and over 3,000 women and children health care clinics across the country, with a staff of over 500,000.

In 1998, the mortality rates of infants and children below five years were 33.2 per thousand and 42 percent thousand, respectively. Meanwhile, the mortality of pregnant women was 56.2 percent 100,000, down 11.6 percent compared with the figure of the previous year, and the planned immunity rate stood at 85 percent.

By 1999, 99.06 percent of school-aged female children studied in school, only 0.09 percent points less than the schooling rate of school-aged boys in the country.

By the end of 1998, China has established 105 children's welfare houses, enrolling over 20,000 orphans, and nine SOS children's villages, housing over 700 orphans. Most of the orphans living in these facilities are female.

Currently, China has set up 1,520 special schools with over 370,000 handicapped young students, six times of the figure of 1990.

More than 17,000 disabled people are now being trained at 2,853 health-recovery institutions and 520 training centers for children who have lost their hearing ability.

(Eastday)