China aims to expand human resources industry

BEIJING — China will foster growth of the human resources industry in the next few years to better serve the country's economic development, according to a government plan.

By the end of 2020, China expects revenue of the human resource industry to reach 2 trillion yuan (about $303.7 billion), according to an action plan released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

The country aims to have increasing contributions from the human resources industry to economic development by building a professional, international, industrialized and information-based human resource service system, said the plan.

Other targets include establishing a number of human resource industrial parks nationwide and bringing the number of employees in the industry to 600,000, with about 10,000 of them being industrial leaders.

Human resource service providers will be encouraged to offer service to Chinese enterprises seeking overseas expansion, as well as enterprises and investors from Belt and Road countries who wish to start businesses in China, the plan said.

To bolster the industry's development, the ministry also asked local authorities to improve regulation and assessment of the industry while simplifying business registration and streamlining procedures for human resource enterprises.

In 2016, China's human resources industry recorded nearly 1.19 trillion yuan in business revenue, a year-on-year expansion of 22.4 percent. There were 26,700 service providers in the industry by the end of last year, employing some 553,000 people, official data showed.