Chinese President Hu Jintao on Thursday called for stronger efforts to tackle a widening gap between rich and poor.

Speaking during a discussion of China's income distribution, Hu said salaries should be market-oriented but China must focus on fairness, make policies favourable for poorer regions and crack down on illegal earnings, according to a report posted on the central government Web site (www.gov.cn).

Beijing must aim for higher minimum living standards in urban areas, better pensions and the expansion of the middle class, he told the meeting. Premier Wen Jiabao also attended the gathering.

A Chinese think-tank has suggested higher minimum wages to halt the emergence of an urban underclass, after a study found that from 1994 to 2004 China's urban poor had become poorer, with minimum wage rises not matching average urban income rises.

"We have to stick to the system in which distribution according to work is dominant ... (but) further attention should be paid to social fairness," Hu was quoted saying.

He also called for government agencies to double their efforts to "try to ease the trend of widening wealth distribution gap between regions and certain social groups".

Hu, who also called for adjustment of "excessive" incomes, reiterated a pledge to boost public servants' salaries but said the government needed to do more research into how to do it.

Official corruption and land grabs are other problems that have caused discontent, particularly among China's more than 700 million rural population, who earn just a third the average annual wages of city dwellers.

Finance Minister Jin Renqing, in an interview with the official Xinhua news agency, said the government would inject more funds into rural regions to help beef up infrastructure and increase farmers' incomes.

The central government has already earmarked a budget of 339.7 billion yuan (US$42 billion) for the rural regions, 42.2 billion yuan more than total funds in 2005, and most of the money has already been distributed, he added.