New sectors can create jobs for workers during overcapacity cuts

AT THE NEWS conference that concluded the annual sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee on Wednesday, Premier Li Keqiang said that overcapacity will be cut but that will not be done at the cost of workers being without jobs. Beijing Youth Daily commented on Thursday:

There are two ways of cutting overcapacity, namely shutting down some enterprises that consume resources and cutting down the inefficient parts of certain industries. Both of them mean mass layoffs of workers, this is especially true for the coal and steel industries.

But there is hope that the workers made redundant will be able to find new jobs, if resources are transferred to new, emerging industries, which are more efficient and provide jobs for those laid off from the old industries. In this way there will be less opposition to the government's efforts to cut overcapacity.