Steady growth in numbers and obvious strengthening

By the end of 2001, there were 24.33 million individual industrial and commercial proprietors employing 47.6 million people and their registered capital increased by 3.64 per cent to 343.58 billion renminbi. The number of privately-run enterprises grew by 15.1 per cent to reach 2.03 million. Their registered capital increased by an even larger margin of 36.9 per cent, or 1.82 trillion renminbi. The average registered capital was 898,000 renminbi in 2001, a rise of 18.8 per cent year-on-year. There were 23,000 privately-run businesses whose registered capital was over 10 million renminbi, while those with registered capital of more than 100 million totalled 383. The number of investors involved in those privately-run enterprises was 4.61 million in 2001, 16.6 per cent more than the previous year.

The privately-run enterprises employed 27.13 million workers, an increase of 12.8 per cent over 2000. The average number of workers employed by privately-run enterprises was 11.1 persons. About 21,700 privately- run enterprises employed 100 “500 workers and there were 1,808 enterprises employing 500 to 1000 workers. 337 large privately-run enterprises employed over 1000 workers.