CHINA

Serious Unemployment Problem Is Acknowledged: The government said that moves away from the socialist welfare state had put unprecedented strains on the economy. Li Boyong, labor minister, said: “China’s employment situation is extremely difficult, and the country now is faced with unprecedented challenges in deploying all the jobless.” The official Xinhua news agency, which quoted Li, said China would try to register its unemployed to get some control over the situation. The Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper vowed the urban unemployment rate would be limited to 3% for this year and next, up from 2.6% last year. Economists said China’s unemployment statistics are misleadingly low because they do not include the large mass of rural unemployed and underemployed, and they mask much urban joblessness behind euphemisms such as “youths waiting for work.”