Migrant worker numbers rise to nearly 300 million last year

The number of migrant workers continued to grow last year, with various regions providing more jobs, according to a report released by the National Bureau of Statistics.

The country had more than 299 million migrant workers in 2024, a 0.7 percent year-on-year increase, the report said. Among them, 68.4 million worked in another province from their hometown, while the rest worked in their own provinces.

The eastern region attracted the largest number of migrant workers, with more than 153 million migrant workers working there last year.

About 70 million worked in the central region. About 66 million worked in the western region, and 8.8 million worked in the northeastern region.

All of these regions saw a slight year-on-year increase in the number of jobs for migrant workers.

Last year, females took up 37.6 percent of migrant workers, 0.3 percentage points more than the previous year.

The average age of migrant workers also increased by 0.1 years to 43.2 years.

More than 54 percent of the workers worked in the tertiary industry, 0.8 percentage points higher than the previous year, while the proportion of those working in the second industry dropped by 0.8 percentage points to 44.7 percent.

Ministry to introduce standards for autonomous driving

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is accelerating the development of compulsory national standards for autonomous driving to establish a "safety baseline" for autonomous driving systems, it said.

In a document laying out this year's key tasks for standardization in the automotive industry, the ministry said it will boost efforts to provide standards for intelligent connected vehicles.

It will speed up the revision of compulsory national standards for combined driver assistance systems and automatic emergency braking systems.

It will also revise the standards for lane-keeping assist systems, and promote the formulation of parking assist systems standards.

The ministry detailed other tasks, including improving the safety and performance of new energy vehicles' batteries and speeding up the formulation and revision of car chip standards.

Campaign to remove barriers to create unified national market

China has started a campaign to remove barriers to entry to establish a unified national market.

A notice issued recently required central and State departments, as well as authorities in all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities to overhaul various kinds of unreasonable rules and take effective measures to ensure companies' access to the market in fields that are not forbidden.

The notice, which was issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Commerce and the State Administration for Market Regulation, required provincial-level authorities to compare local rules and policies with higher-level laws, and rectify or even abolish rules and policies that fail to follow the laws.

The notice laid out several channels for the public to file complaints about violations of the negative list system for market access and illegal rules and policies restricting market access.