Fan Guangju, a deputy to the National People's Congress, said that industrial transfer means transferring such laborers to non-farming sector, and that regional transfer means moving such laborers to towns and small cities.

Fan, secretary of the Qiqihar City Committee of the Communist Party of China, said, "Without the transfer of rural laborers, there would be no prosperity of the people as a whole or economic development. Transferring redundant rural laborers is a major measure to increase farmers' incomes."

Governments at all levels should broaden employment channels for such laborers and do pragmatic things for them, he said.

He outlined Qiqihar's progress in absorbing such laborers. Some 1.53 million people in Qiqihar are engaged directly in the farming sector, with 600,000 needing to be transferred. To date, more than 60 percent of redundant laborers have shifted to non-farming sectors or moved to towns.

According to Fan, the measures to transfer redundant rural laborers during the 10th Five-Year Plan period should include transferring them to production, processing, marketing and service links of industrialized agriculture, transferring them to township-run enterprises and the private sector, transferring them to towns and small cities, arranging them to provide labor services elsewhere, offering them jobs in priority urban construction projects, and helping them find jobs in the service sector.

(People's Daily 03/14/2001)