Hu, also the general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks at a national symposium on re-employment held in Beijing on Friday and Saturday.

Addressing the symposium, Hu said creating jobs for the nation's laid-off workers is in the interests of all of the people and the nation's reform and development strategy.

He urged all levels of the Party and government to fully understand the importance of creating more jobs and take more concrete action to do this.

In the first seven months of this year, 3.7 million people were employed and 2.1 million laid-off workers were re-employed despite the negative impact of SARS.

Despite this progress, Hu said China still faces a relatively grave employment situation. Yet China also possesses a number of favorable conditions to tackle this issue, including sustained rapid economic growth, improvement in restructuring sectors of the economy and the creation of various pro-employment policies.

Hu said the main policies and measures on job creation have been laid out and now the key to tackling the issue is to ensure their implementation.

Also at the symposium, Premier Wen Jiabao stressed that governments at various levels, despite existing difficulties, must strive to fulfill this year's targets and tasks in this field.

China faces a grave unemployment situation as 10 million new job-seekers entered the labour market this year to compete with over 6 million laid-off workers and 8 million registered unemployed people for jobs.

The government expects to create at least 8 million jobs this year to help ease the situation negatively influenced by the SARS outbreak.

Officials with the Ministry of Labor and Social Security said this year's target is attainable as the country maintains a fast economic growth.

So far, China's labor departments have set up about 18,000 employment agencies, which helped 9.78 million jobless people find employment in 2002. Job services offered by those agencies to laid-off workers and urban registered unemployed people are free of charge.

(China Daily August 18, 2003)