China's urbanization drive has gained momentum over the last
five years as its towns continue to develop rapidly in terms of
population and industrial businesses.
Statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)
on Monday show that the average population in China's towns
increased by 27.5 percent to 9,511 in 2005 from the year 2000. More
than half of China's 20,000 towns had a population of over 30,000.
A town in China is defined as having a population of between 2,000
and 120,000.
Statistics also show that the end of 2005, there were on average
520 enterprises in every town of which 180 were industrial
enterprises. And the fiscal revenue of the towns in 2005 rose 130
percent to 22.1 million yuan (US$2.76 million) from the year
2000.
"The rapid development of towns and the emergence of tertiary
industry in the have created tremendous job opportunities for rural
laborers," said Zhang Weimin, deputy director of NBS, adding that
more than 100 million rural laborers work in the country's
towns.
Statistics show that the number of people working in enterprises
in every town averaged 5,444 in 2005, an increase of 35 percent
from 2000.
Electricity was available in 99.5 percent of towns, a postal
service in 97.8 percent of towns and medical services in 99 percent
of towns.
(Xinhua News Agency October 17, 2006)