In a bid to keep the registered urban unemployment rate below 4.6 per cent next year, China aims to create 9 million new jobs in urban districts next year, says the country's human resources and social security minister, Yin Weimin.

With the urban unemployment rate in the past five years being below 4.3 per cent, the Chinese government had revised this year's target of 4.5 per centto a marginal higher 4.6 per cent.

With its economy surging, China had planned to create 10 million new jobs this year. Government figures show that it surpassed its taget in October, creating 10.2 million new jobs. However, the slowdown in the Chinesse economy due to declining export orders from its recession-hit customers has created a severe presure on the country.

Beijing feel that the growing rank of unemployed people will swell  further and become a major source of potential trouble as migrant workers had gone back to their villages after being laid off from factories that closed down due to the global financial turmoil.

A central rural work conference, which ended on 28 December, has ruled that unemployed migrant workers will be encouraged to start businesses by giving them credit extensions, tax breaks, business registrations and information consulting service.

To ease the burden on employers, the Chinese government plans to ask them to make deferred payments of the obligaory social security funds.

The country is facing unemployment problem as the decline in exports has forced small and medium firms with labour-intensive work in Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces been forced to cut production and lay-off employees in arge numbers.

According to figures released by the ministry of agriculture, 10 provinces and municipalities have submitted figures totaling approximately 7.8 million migrant labourers had returned home earlier than in previous years for the Spring Festival.

Hubei, Anhui, and Hunan provinces are the main contributors to the workforce in the urban areas of China and in Hubei alone, of the nine million migrant workers who went to urban areas for employment, 1.4 million had returned to their respective villages.

China's economy decelerated to 9 per cent in the third quarter after an impressive 11.9-per cent growth last year that could decline further in the prevailing global economic climate, warn economists.

Evidence is mounting that an estimated 130 million rural migrant workers who had taken up jobs in Chinese cities as construction workers, factory workers and street cleaners in the boom time are facing bleak prospects. (See: China feels the pangs as the world slows down)

The impact is felt more in cities like the Dongguan, an exporting hub near Hong Kong, where thousands of workers remain either unpaid or have lost their jobs as the toy factories try and cope with the downturn overseas. The local government had to intervene and give $3.5 million to the employees of Smart Union, which sold toys to Mattel, Disney and Hasbro when 7,000 workers went on strike after losing their jobs due to the closure of the company.

however, China is confident that the $586 billion it has undertaken to pump in the economy early this month in the low-cost housing industry all over the country, in the rural infrastructure sector like roads, railways and airports, will create more jobs both in the urban as well as rural areas.

Results of a survey showed that workers in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou have faced bleak employment prospects since the first quarter of 2009, while those in Chongqing and Xian in western China fared better.