The measures include prohibiting all market access discrimination against private enterprises, establishing a service center to help them handle affairs related to the World Trade Organization, assisting them with regard to overseas investment, improving the credit climate and setting up an entrepreneurs' club.

Pan Lisheng, head of the Zhejiang Entrepreneurs' Club established Tuesday morning, said that the measures were adopted in response to the call for the strengthening of the private sector made by the recently-concluded 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

He said the province's private sector has undergone a period of primal accumulation for industrialization and needs to improve its competence and enlarge its scale as quickly as possible.

Currently, more than 10 million people are working in the private sector in Zhejiang, about 20 percent of its total population. In 2001, the province ranked first in five national rankings on the private sector, including output value, sales volume and foreign exchange earnings.

(Xinhua News Agency November 20, 2002)