Chinese PM calls for innovation, entrepreneurship

Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang said mass entrepreneurship and innovation are becoming a new growth engine and the central government will continue to support such activities, the media reported on Tuesday.

As China's economy enters the "new normal" trend, structural reform can inspire creativity, such as measures to support innovation and mass entrepreneurship, which will help steer the economy toward a more sustainable path, Li said on Monday at the opening ceremony of the first mass entrepreneurship and innovation event in Beijing.

Innovation and entrepreneurship could generate more jobs, inspire creativity, promote structural readjustment and facilitate a medium-to-high growth of the economy, Li said.

The government should offer solid support to innovators and entrepreneurs, constantly improve public services and products, remove related obstacles, and increase tolerance for faults to enhance confidence and courage, he said.

Data released on Monday showed that in the January-September period, the high-tech sector reported 10.4 percent growth in value-added output, 4.2 percentage points higher than the figure for the whole industrial sector.

In the first three quarters of this year, China created more new jobs than the government had been aiming to do in the whole year, said Sheng Laiyun, spokesperson of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

In Zhongguancun, 19,000 firms were established in the first five months of the year, 200 percent growth from the average posted in the past few years.

China's economy posted 6.9 percent growth year on year in the third quarter of 2015, the first time the quarterly growth rate has dropped under 7 percent since the second quarter of 2009.