The economic rights and quality of life of the Chinese people have been improving as employment was maximized over the past four decades, a white paper on the achievements in China's human rights showed Thursday.

China gives top priority to ensuring employment stability and encourages widespread entrepreneurship. Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 11.9 million new jobs created in urban areas in 2020.

Private enterprises provide more than 80 percent of urban jobs. As of 2020, China's employed population reached 750 million, with 463 million in urban areas.

People's incomes continue to rise, as the white paper shows that the country's per capita GDP increased from 385 yuan ($59.4) to 72,000 yuan ($11,112.5) between 1978 and 2020 and that average per capita disposable income was 32,189 yuan in 2020.

Consumption patterns are improving, as the Engel coefficient, which measures the proportion of income spent on food, was down 33.7 percentage points from 1978 to 30.2 percent in 2020, indicating that people are tending to spend more of their money on items such as entertainment and luxury goods rather than food alone.

Housing conditions have improved markedly as well. The per capita floor space of urban residents in 2019 was about nine times that in 1978, and construction projects have helped nearly 200 million poor people improve their housing conditions.

Public transport has become more convenient and safer, with the country's rail length growing to 146,000 kilometers, high-speed rail to 38,000 kilometers, road length to 5.2 million kilometers, and urban rail transit 7,355 kilometers.

The government has also made great efforts to develop new types of infrastructure to ensure that people can benefit more from information technology. By June 2021, 5G base stations across the country had reached 847,000.

In 2020, every 100 people had 113.9 mobile phones, and internet usage was 70.4 percent nationwide and 55.9 percent in rural areas.

New business forms like online shopping are thriving. Some 79 percent of all internet users were online shoppers in 2020, and online retail sales reached 11.8 trillion yuan, up 10.9 percent from 2019.