Social safety net widened

BEIJING - China took more steps this year to build up its social security net to benefit more people in rural and urban areas while creating more than 12 million new jobs in non-farming sectors, Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security, said on Thursday.

With the addition of those new jobs in cities and towns, China was able to keep its registered urban unemployment rate below the government's full-year target of 4.6 percent this year, Yin said at a national conference on human resources and social security.

Compared with 11.68 million new jobs created in 2010, jobs created this year also exceeded the government's target of 9 million, according to data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.