Society

China's first central document of the year has again focused on rural problems, just as it has done for the past six years since 2004.

The themes of the previous top central documents, beginning in 2004, were respectively: Increasing the income of farmers; promoting agricultural production capacity; advancing the construction of the "new countryside"; developing modern agriculture; strengthening agricultural infrastructure construction; and promoting the stable development of agriculture and increasing the income of farmers in 2009.

In contrast, the top central document this year focuses on coordinating urban-rural development, which indicates that solutions for issues concerning agriculture, the countryside and farmers will not be sought independently.

The top central document this year focuses on balancing urban-rural development as a fundamental requirement. This balance will help build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and promote urbanization as a prime factor in maintaining a steady, fast economic growth. Urbanization is the Chinese government's hope for a new growth engine.

The document as well as the Central Economic Work Conference and the Central Rural Work Conference held last month in Beijing all have stressed the advancement of urbanization and cohesively tying development between large, medium and small cities and small towns. Both the conferences and the document centered on accelerating the development of medium- and small-sized cities and small towns.

China created 11.02 million new jobs in urban areas in 2009, topping the government goal of 9 million, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said Friday.

This figure was about 22.4 percent higher than the government's whole year target set in March last year, Yin Chengji, spokesman of the ministry told a press conference.

Around 5.14 million laid-off workers were re-employed last year, exceeding the preset goal of 5 million.

Urban unemployment rate stood at 4.3 percent, with 9.21 million people being registered to be unemployed.

As pressure to preserve the world's precious forest resources is growing, China's forest tenure reform in recent years serves as a good example for other countries, said an international research report released here Friday.

The report, published by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a global coalition of top forest organizations, referred to the tenure reform in China as "arguably the largest in world history:" It has affected over 400 million landowners and 100 million hectares of forest and benefited farmers' income and afforestation.

Entitled "The End of the Hinterland: Forests, Conflict and Climate Change," the report argued that despite being long regarded as remote areas, forest lands that can generate food, fuel, fiber and carbon are now booming in value.

But profit may threaten forest lands and its inhabitants, and conflicts have occurred occasionally due to unclear land rights in some countries. In 2009, a violent clash over rights to resources in Amazon forests left nearly 100 dead.

But China's forest lands reform, started in the early 2000s, allowed collective forest owners to reallocate their land-use rights to households or to keep them as a collective, the report said.

A pilot scheme to sell railway tickets based on proven IDs began Thursday in south China in a bid to prevent ticket hoarding by scalpers during the upcoming Chinese New Year travel peak.

The first real-name ticket was booked at 7:03 a.m. by phone, confirmed sources with the ticket booking system of Guangzhou Railway Group (GRG), operator of Guangdong Province's railways.

The ticket, priced at 423 yuan (61.96 U.S. dollars), was for a hard berth on a train coded K446 scheduled for Jan. 30, from Guangdong's Shenzhen City to northwestern Xi'an City.

The real-name system was initially adopted on trains between Guangdong and inland provinces of Hunan, Sichuan and Guizhou and Chongqing Municipality, home to millions of migrant workers in Guangdong who will rush back for the Spring Festival holiday.

The Ministry of Railways estimated it would serve 210 million passengers, up 9.5 percent from a year earlier, in the 40-day festival rush period from Jan. 30. This year's Chinese Lunar New Year falls on Feb. 14.

The supply of railway tickets in China often fails to meet demand. Every year during the Spring Festival exodus, many people cannot obtain tickets from authorized outlets and are forced to buy from scalpers.