Hong Kong Commercial Daily:

Since the beginning of this year, unemployment has reached relatively high levels as the number of job vacancies has been decreasing, and the manufacturing and catering industries - the two major employers of migrant labor - are still recovering. Therefore, my question is: What multipronged efforts are being taken to help migrant workers get employed? And, how are the funds designated for poverty alleviation being pooled?

Liu Yongfu:

I'll start by addressing the question about funding. The funds provided by the central government for poverty alleviation this year have increased 15.8%. Meanwhile, regions are required to increase rather than reduce their financing for the program, which can also receive support from the central government when necessary. In fact, we have pooled substantial funds that consist of agricultural funds, financial funds and aggregated social funds, in addition to the designated funds. When combined, these can remove the obstacles that impede the poverty alleviation work. Although it is true that there is never enough money, we still can evaluate the outcome using general standards. That is the situation with regards to funds.

Second, I will respond to your concern about employment. It is a fact that under the impact of the global pandemic and downward economic pressure, enterprises have received fewer purchase orders, which in turn has strained the operations of manufacturers and business entities. As a result, the unemployment rate has risen, with job markets around the world being affected - in this, China is no exception. However, whilst trying to avoid volatility in general, we have focused on the employment of migrant workers from poverty-stricken regions. With the goal of strengthening poverty alleviation through employment that I mentioned in the introduction , we have prioritized the impoverished labor force in the resumption of work and production. For instance, the number of rural workers on the move through chartered transportation since the outbreak of the pandemic, particularly across provinces, has reached 6.02 million. Of these, 1.52 million have been impoverished migrant workers, accounting for 25.2%, or over one quarter of the entire flow. You are aware that impoverished people accounted for 10.2% of the rural population as of 2012, however, now the exported labor force moving through "point-to-point" chartered transportation has reached 25.2%. This percentage shows the efforts of different localities in focusing on mobilizing impoverished populations.

Our efforts also focus on intra-provincial employment. Take the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region for example. As a result of constant labor force demands from the northern and eastern parts of the region, more than 50,000 impoverished people from the south have been provided with job opportunities in these two areas. In addition, newly launched enterprises, poverty-alleviation workshops and leading enterprises have also provided jobs to the local labor force. So far, the autonomous region has created more than 3 million poverty-alleviation charitable posts, including, more than 1 million forest rangers, 850,000 photovoltaic workers - whose number is expected to reach 1 million by the first half of this year - and 250,000 road maintenance staff.

We have been overseeing these three efforts, namely, migrant labor force, charitable posts and localized employment. China has 290 million rural migrant workers, among which, about 26 million impoverished laborers have been mobilized. However, the rest, estimated at around 2.01 million, are still awaiting relocated job opportunities that have yet to be realized. The situation requires us to secure employment for these 26 million migrant workers before creating opportunities for the remaining approximately 2 million. Among the 290 million migrant workers, around 9% are classed as impoverished. These people will be given priority for employment with our preferential policies and solutions provided for employment issues. However, this does not mean that we will give every job opportunity to those classed as impoverished. But they will be given priority in the labor force market. Thank you.