COLORFUL APPEAL: Children create paintings during a water conservation event in Yantai, east China's Shandong Province, on May 12 (XINHUA)

Job-Hunting Support

The Central Government outlined measures to help college graduates in their job hunts on May 15 amid this year's grave employment situation.

According to a statement released after a meeting of the State Council, China's cabinet, about 6.99 million college students will graduate this year.

The State Council called for the implementation of existing policies favorable to graduates' employment, broadened ways and increased job vacancies, and for guiding graduates to seek jobs in small and medium-sized enterprises, private businesses and at the grassroots level.

The Central Government also encouraged graduates to turn toward self-employment and start their own businesses, promising to provide training subsidies, petty loans, tax breaks and other incentives.

Employment services should also be improved, according to the statement, which added that graduates from low-income families will receive financial assistance.

'Left-behind' Children

Nearly 100 million rural Chinese children's parents work in cities, according to a special report released by the All-China Women's Federation on May 9.

The report, titled Research Report on Rural Left-Behind Children and Migrant Children, said that the number of "left-behind" children cared for by elderly relatives in the countryside hit 61.02 million as of 2010, accounting for 37.7 percent of rural children and 21.88 percent of the country's child population. The figure was 2.42 million more than that in 2005.

The number of migrant children, which refers to children migrating with their parents to other places, neared 36 million in 2010, an increase of 41 percent compared with 2005, according to the report.

New Media

China has the world's largest new media market, highlighted by the country's growing Internet penetration and a vibrant range of new media applications, according to an industry report published by Xinhua News Agency on May 15.

China has made great strides in pushing development in sectors that are key to the emergence of new media, such as mobile telecommunications and information technology, says the Report on China's Rising New Media.

Data from the China Internet Networks Information Center show that China's online population had reached 564 million as of the end of last year, with the number of mobile Internet users hitting 420 million.

The fast expansion of network coverage has fueled a surge in the variety of Internet applications, ranging from instant messaging and video-sharing to shopping and banking, as well as social networking.

The growing number of applications will help new media become China's most significant social and information platform, the report says.

Low-Rent Housing

The Chinese Government has allocated 8 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) to support low-rent housing projects in 2013, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) announced on May 15.

The funds will provide subsidies for the rental, purchase or rebuilding of low-rent housing units.

Of the total, 4.33 billion yuan ($704 million) and 3.41 billion yuan ($554 million), respectively 54.2 and 42.7 percent of the total, went to the country's central and western regions. East China, the country's most developed region, received the remaining 253 million yuan ($41 million), according to the MOF.