BEIJING — The State Council, China’s cabinet, said on Sept 20 that it will step up efforts to expand employment.

“China should encourage entrepreneurship and innovation to create jobs, and help key groups such as college graduates find employment opportunities,” according to a statement issued after a State Council executive meeting presided over by Premier Li Keqiang.

“Facing economic downward pressure in recent years, China has made employment a top priority and taken more proactive employment policies, which helped the country add more than 13 million urban jobs every year,” the statement said.

It said that demand for jobs was still high and there remained many structural problems, which called for increased effort to improve employment.

Entrepreneurship and innovation should be encouraged to create jobs, with measures to be rolled out to support migrant workers to start their own businesses back home, it said

Pro-employment policies should be made to help key groups such as college graduates and laid-off workers from overcapacity cuts.

Vocational education should be improved to meet the demand of the job market, while labor and social security policies should keep up with new employment trends.

Supervision of the labor market should be strengthened to protect the legitimate right of job seekers and migrant workers, the statement said.

At the meeting, the State Council also decided to establish more pilot zones for cross-border e-commerce in cities with development potential.

Since the approval of the first pilot zone more than two years ago, the new models experimented there have brought valuable experiences for nationwide application, according to the statement.

China already has 13 pilot zones for cross-border e-commerce in cities including Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Tianjin, where new models for technical standards, business procedures and regulatory mechanisms are implemented.

According to the Ministry of Commerce, in 2016 the total trade volume via cross-border e-commerce in the 13 pilot zones more than doubled year-on-year to reach 163.7 billion yuan ($24.9 billion).

The meeting also decided to extend the transition period for supervision of cross-border e-commerce retail imports an extra year, to the end of 2018.