A senior official said Tuesday that per-capita net income of China's rural residents rose 6.8 percent last year to 2,936 yuan (US$355), the highest growth in the past seven years since 1997.

Per-capita disposable income of urban residents in 2004 reached 9,422 yuan (US$1140), a net rise of 7.7 percent, said Li Deshui, commissioner with the National Bureau of Statistics, at Tuesday's press conference.

By the end of 2004, the saving deposit of urban and rural population totaled more than 11.95 trillion yuan (US$1.44 trillion), an increase of 1.59-plus trillion yuan (US$192.6 billion) over the end of 2003.

In 2004, the number of the newly employed reached 9.8 million among the urban residents, 800,000 more than the anticipated goal, said Li, quoting statistics from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.

China's urban registered unemployment rate dropped to 4.2 percent at the end of 2004, a drop of 0.1 percent from a year ago, Li said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 25, 2005)