This Day, That Year

Item from May 15, 1998, in China Daily: Young laid-off workers attend free beauty treatment courses at a school in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. The city's Youth League is helping laid-off workers find new jobs through retraining.

President Jiang Zemin yesterday urged Party committees and governments at all levels across China to give top priority to providing basic living standard guarantees for laid-off workers from State-owned enterprises and helping them find jobs ... Vocational training should be developed to a large extent, he said ... Laid-off workers should be encouraged to work in private business and service trades, he said, and foreign-funded and private businesses should be encouraged to hire laid-off workers.

The number of registered companies in the country hit 844,000 in the first quarter, up 38.4 percent year-on-year, according to the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.