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)