China's urban basic pension insurance covers 219m people
Xinhua
About 218.91 million Chinese were covered by an urban basic pension insurance system at the end of 2008. That's about 17.54 million more than in 2007, the ministry said.
Urban basic medical insurance covered 318.22 million people in 2008, up 95.11 million from the previous year, the ministry said.
The urban basic medical insurance and pension systems are part of China's preliminary social security system, which also includes work injury insurance, unemployment insurance and maternity insurance.
The unemployment insurance system covered 124 million people last year, up 7.55 million from 2007. The work injury insurance system covered 137.87 million people in 2008, up 16.14 million year-on-year, the ministry said.
Maternity insurance covered 92.54 million people, up 14.79 million from 2007, the ministry said.
Urban pension insurance
About 218 million Chinese were covered by an urban basic pension insurance system at the end of 2008, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said yesterday.
That's about 17 million more than in 2007, officials said.
Urban basic medical insurance covered 318 million people in 2008, up 95 million from the previous year, the ministry said.
The urban basic medical insurance and pension systems are part of China's preliminary social security system, which also includes work injury insurance, unemployment insurance and maternity insurance.
China's urban population exceeds 600 million
(Xinhua)
China's urban population surged to 607 million with an urbanization rate of 45.7 percent at the end of 2008, a social researcher revealed Monday.
The urban population had increased by 148 million since 2000, almost level with the rural population in the world's most populous nation with 1.3 billion people, according to Shan Jingjing of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).
In the early 1980s, the rural population accounted for nearly 80 percent of the total.
The urban surge reflected economic growth and internal labor movements, including 130 million migrant workers who left rural homes to work in the cities, said Shan, who is also vice editor-in-chief of the Blue Book of Cities in China, published by the CASS on Monday.
According to the blue book, China has 118 megalopolises of more than 1 million people, and 39 such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenyang are super metropolises of more than 2 million residents.
Compared with the 2000 figures derived from China's fifth census, urban citizens covered by basic medical insurance had increased 93.87 million, basic pension insurance participants increased 17.53 million, unemployment insurance participants increased 7.55 million, employment injury insurance participants increased 16.37 million and maternity insurants increased 14.06 million.
Urbanization had not narrowed income gaps. According to the blue book, the urban:rural income ratio averaged about 5 in 2008 by contrast with the gap in 2000 when the ratio was 2.79, said Wei Houkai, co-editor-in-chief of the blue book.
With rapid urbanization, China was also encountering surging challenges amid the global downturn, which has had a serious impact on the economy, the book warned.
"One of the challenges will be unemployment," Shan said. "According to research on 15 enterprises in five provinces, job vacancies have decreased by 5.3 percent since the end of March."
The unemployment situation would be worsened by China's huge labor pool with an annual 15 million new job hunters and some 6 million college graduates this summer, Shan said.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture in March, there were 11 million unemployed migrant workers.
But the book also mentioned that a CASS survey conducted in Jiangxi, Sichuan, Jiangsu and Guangdong Provinces after this year's lunar new year (late January-early February) found that the migrant return rate was not as high as media reports claimed.
