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'No plans to close factories in Guangdong'

By Qiu Quanlin (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-07 09:29

Authorities in Guangdong will not "intentionally" close labor-intensive firms, as they play an important role in the province, Governor Huang Huahua said on Friday.

"Under the current economic situation, labor-intensive firms are a necessary part of the industrial structure," he told reporters on the sidelines of the National People's Congress session in Beijing.

Reports last year said a large number of such firms in Guangdong, especially in the Pearl River Delta, would face closure as the province sought to introduce more hi-tech companies.

"Guangdong has the largest number of migrant workers, many of whom need to work in the labor-intensive sector," Huang said.

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Guangdong has more than 20 million migrant workers, 19 million of whom are from outside the province, he said.

"The global economic downtown has had a huge impact on employment in the province. As a result, we need to help migrant workers find jobs here," he said.

The province will attach the utmost importance to the introduction of high technology for labor-intensive industries to help improve their competitiveness, he said.

"They should not be regarded as lower-level industries. After upgrading, they will be modern," Huang said.

About 460,000 migrant workers are currently out of work in Guangdong, he said

Last year, more than 4,900 factories in Guangdong were forced to close or relocate, leaving 590,000 people without jobs, Huang said.

"But we created more than 1.9 million jobs, or about a sixth of the country's total," he said, adding that the unemployment rate in Guangdong was 2.56 percent last year, the lowest in China.