Chinese government was urged to better develop local service sector by gradually opening fields such as foreign trade, tourism, banking and insurance.
Participants at a service-sector workshop held by the State Development Planning Commission (SDPC) Thursday said that administrative restrictions concerning service sector should be eased up in a bid to foster the growth of service sector and tackle unemployment problems.
According to SDPC's vice minister Wang Yang, an increasing number of employment opportunities have arisen in the service sector since the 1990s but those in the agricultural and industrial sectors have been decreasing.
Statistics show that service sector contributes 33.6 percent to China's economy in 2001, some 10 percentage points lower than the world average.
Participants also urged large Chinese cities to allocate more resources to develop service sectors, encourage capital inflow to service sectors, and speed up reform in railways, airlines, telecommunications and public utility industries.
(People's Daily June 07, 2002)
