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China worried about jobless migrants, Tibetans

AFP

Chinese job seekers look for work at an employment agency in Xiamen on 25 January 2009. China said about 20 million rural migrants were jobless due to the global economic slowdown, and the Tibetans fighting Beijing’s rule will be the biggest worries for social unrest.File photo/AFP/Mark Ralston/China

Millions of unemployed rural migrants and Tibetans fighting Beijing’s rule will be the biggest worries for China’s police and public security forces this year, state media reported Wednesday.

The report in the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece newspaper, came two days after China said about 20 million rural migrants were jobless due to the global economic slowdown, raising fears about social unrest.

Authorities said it was vital to “control factors that could cause instability or problems like housing, the stock market, failed companies, mass layoffs and migrant workers going home to the countryside,” the paper said.

The report was based on a document drafted by the public security committee that answers to the Communist Party’s politburo.

The document says government agencies should quickly address employee concerns such as unpaid salaries, as such disputes could quickly turn into mass unrest, the People’s Daily said.

A senior Chinese official said Monday that about 20 million rural migrants were out of work, a three-fold increase over the figures released last month, indicating the slowdown in the world’s third biggest economy was accelerating.

Another problem for security forces in the coming year will be the situation in Tibet and adjacent regions with significant Tibetan populations, according to the document, published in full on the People’s Daily Web site.

Security has been tight in Tibet’s capital Lhasa since protests erupted in the city on 14 March last year against Chinese rule, and then spread to neighbouring Tibetan-inhabited provinces.

Copyright © 2009 AFP

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