More and more urban Chinese residents prefer to work in private companies with the number of employees in non-public businesses rising by almost 11 million annually between 2002 and 2006, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics.

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In the four years, altogether 43.9 million urbanities found jobs in non-public sectors, including 16.9 million in foreign-funded firms and companies invested by business people from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and 27 million in other forms of private firms.

Meanwhile, the number of people working in State-owned and collective-owned enterprises declined by 10.7 million in the four years.

"The private sector of the economy has become a main avenue of employment and re-employment in China," Zhong Youping, deputy head of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, said at a forum last month.

By the end of September this year, China's private enterprises employ 120 million people, up 9.5 percent over September 2006.