Meanwhile, local governments are told to find jobs for disabled people and to give prior consideration to disabled people when developing the community service sector.

The government of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province said last month it will provide 8,600 new jobs to disabled people by the end of March.

In northwest China's Gansu Province, 150,000 disable people have received vocational training over the past five years, and half of them succeeded in finding a job.

A total of 3,043 employment service agencies have been set up at the provincial, municipal and county levels to provide special employment services to the disabled, according to a government white paper on China's human resources issued in September.

China has about 83 million disabled people, accounting for 6.34 percent of the country's population, and the number could exceed 100 million within five years, predicted Chen Gong, who is affiliated with a research institute at Beijing's Peking University.

"Those with disabilities and their families account for more than 20 percent of China's population," said Chen. "Ensure their well-being is critical to China's social and economic development."

The Chinese government takes employment as the main approach to improve disabled people's lives, as it allows them to be independent.

The number of disabled employees in urban China had reached 4.4 million by the end of 2009. In rural area, some 17.6 million disabled people have stable jobs.

The registered unemployment rate of disabled people in urban areas has dropped this year from 13.6 percent in 2009 to 8.6 percent, according to a report released by the China Disabled Persons' Federation Wednesday, two days ahead of International Day of Disabled Persons that falls on Friday.

Still, more than half of disabled persons try to find jobs through personal relationships, which indicates that job services for disabled people should be further improved.

(Xinhua News Agency December 4, 2010)