(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-02-21 16:19

BEIJING  -- The number of rural Chinese following the plough shrank by more than 80 million between 1996 and 2006, according to the results of a national agriculture census released online on Thursday.

At the end of 2006, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, 70.8 percent of working rural people were engaged in some type of agriculture -- farming, forestry, livestock breeding, fishing and related services. That was nearly 5 percentage points down from the end of 1996, the NBS said.

The rest were in the secondary and tertiary industries.

The number of migrant rural workers stood at 130 million, nearly 60 million more than a decade earlier, said the NBS, citing figures from China's second national agriculture census.

Among migrant laborers, 64 percent were male, 82.1 percent were aged below 40 and 80.1 percent were educated to at least junior middle school level.

There were 530 million people in the labor force in rural regions and about 480 million, or 90.1 percent, were working as of the end of 2006, according to the census results.

These findings, from the second national agriculture census, which began in 2006, reflected conditions among 226 million rural households nationwide.

China's rural survey is the largest of its kind in the world. The census collected data on agricultural production, the rural labor force and rural employment, living conditions of rural residents and the environment of rural communities. The first census was launched in 1996

Local governments must make efficient use of the findings of the survey and conduct systematic analysis of rural problems, so as to better guide work related to farming and rural areas, an executive meeting of the State Council, the cabinet, ordered on Wednesday.