Of all the challenges the Chinese economy faces at home and abroad, ensuring stable employment growth next year is the one that policymakers must address immediately.

The Central Economic Work Conference that ends today is a good opportunity for the government to make clear that first things come first.

With a population of 1.3 billion, the world's largest, China faces an enormous heavy employment pressure. Between now and 2010, 10 million people will enter the workforce every year.

The rapid tightening of the domestic job market fully demonstrated how hard the global financial crisis and economic recession has hit the Chinese economy.

In the first three quarters of this year, the country has marched far ahead of its employment schedule to create 9.36 million new jobs and help another 4.09 million laid-off workers to be re-employed.

Yet, since the financial crisis worsened and economic recession deepened in September, the country's unemployment has reportedly been rising rapidly.

Though the official count of latest job losses is not available, recent reports say that the global slowdown has forced some domestic companies to shed staff and cut salaries. These indicate that unemployment is set to rise in the world's most populous nation next year.

Clearly, China needs to prepare for a worst-case scenario as the global slump deepens.

If the present crisis is going to get worse before it gets better, Chinese policymakers must focus on how to guarantee continued growth to provide adequate job opportunities for the growing labor force.

All the monetary easing and fiscal stimulus measures the Chinese authorities have taken will surely help boost economic growth and keep unemployment down.

It may be fair to predict that any sharper-than-expected slowdown will prompt policymakers to do more to sustain the expansion of the world's fourth-biggest economy.

However, in terms of job creation, importance should not only be attached to expanding employment to save people from being left behind in the short run.

A more fundamental challenge is to create a large number of new jobs in industries and enterprises that can spearhead the change of China's growth pattern toward an energy-saving, environmental-friendly and sustainable one.

The more such jobs are created, the more chances the Chinese economy would have of surviving the current crisis. A new strategy for job creation can also continue the long-term growth story that unfolded in the past three decades.

(China Daily 12/10/2008 page8)