Guangdong Province, a dynamic economic powerhouse in south China, is determined to retain its resident population within 97.3 million by the year 2010.

While addressing the provincial teleconference held Friday, Governor Huang Huahua also pledged to bring down the natural growth for population to 6 per thousand during the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006-2010).

Guangdong, which was assigned with the mission to pilot China's reform and opening-up drive in late 1970s, has grown into a leading foreign trade player in the country.

Plenty of opportunities produced by a fast economic expansion in this southern Chinese province have attracted many laborers looking for jobs from far and wide to Guangdong, turning the province into the biggest mecca of migrants in the country.

Guangdong had a resident population of 91.94 million by late last year, of whom, 26 million had been on the move in the province, and the averaged stay away from their permanent residences exceeded six months. Some 60 percent of the transient population were from areas outside Guangdong.

(Xinhua News Agency May 13, 2006)