Society

China said Thursday that its issues with Google should not be "over interpreted" or linked to Sino-U.S. relations.

"The Google case should not be linked with relations between the two governments and countries; otherwise, it's an over-interpretation," said Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei at a press conference.

If foreign companies, including Google, encountered difficulties in China, they should seek resolutions in accordance with Chinese law. The government was willing to help them solve relevant problems, he said.

His remarks came just nine days after Google said it might quit China.

Google's corporate development and chief legal officer, David Drummond, posted a statement on Jan. 12 on the company's official blog, saying it was "reviewing the feasibility of our business operations in China."

According to the statement, the disputes with the Chinese government on Internet regulation and major cyber attacks on the company allegedly originating from China had forced Google to consider exiting.

Google's statement sparked a worldwide focus on ties between China and the United States. Discussions included China's Internet environment, the China-U.S. trade relationship.

But China dismissed the links of Google case with the bilateral relationship.

"I think that should not be interpreted too much, and come up as something concerning the Chinese and U.S. governments," said He.

China's first central document of the year has again focused on rural problems, just as it has done for the past six years since 2004.

The themes of the previous top central documents, beginning in 2004, were respectively: Increasing the income of farmers; promoting agricultural production capacity; advancing the construction of the "new countryside"; developing modern agriculture; strengthening agricultural infrastructure construction; and promoting the stable development of agriculture and increasing the income of farmers in 2009.

In contrast, the top central document this year focuses on coordinating urban-rural development, which indicates that solutions for issues concerning agriculture, the countryside and farmers will not be sought independently.

The top central document this year focuses on balancing urban-rural development as a fundamental requirement. This balance will help build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and promote urbanization as a prime factor in maintaining a steady, fast economic growth. Urbanization is the Chinese government's hope for a new growth engine.

The document as well as the Central Economic Work Conference and the Central Rural Work Conference held last month in Beijing all have stressed the advancement of urbanization and cohesively tying development between large, medium and small cities and small towns. Both the conferences and the document centered on accelerating the development of medium- and small-sized cities and small towns.

China created 11.02 million new jobs in urban areas in 2009, topping the government goal of 9 million, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said Friday.

This figure was about 22.4 percent higher than the government's whole year target set in March last year, Yin Chengji, spokesman of the ministry told a press conference.

Around 5.14 million laid-off workers were re-employed last year, exceeding the preset goal of 5 million.

Urban unemployment rate stood at 4.3 percent, with 9.21 million people being registered to be unemployed.

As pressure to preserve the world's precious forest resources is growing, China's forest tenure reform in recent years serves as a good example for other countries, said an international research report released here Friday.

The report, published by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a global coalition of top forest organizations, referred to the tenure reform in China as "arguably the largest in world history:" It has affected over 400 million landowners and 100 million hectares of forest and benefited farmers' income and afforestation.

Entitled "The End of the Hinterland: Forests, Conflict and Climate Change," the report argued that despite being long regarded as remote areas, forest lands that can generate food, fuel, fiber and carbon are now booming in value.

But profit may threaten forest lands and its inhabitants, and conflicts have occurred occasionally due to unclear land rights in some countries. In 2009, a violent clash over rights to resources in Amazon forests left nearly 100 dead.

But China's forest lands reform, started in the early 2000s, allowed collective forest owners to reallocate their land-use rights to households or to keep them as a collective, the report said.