BEIJING, Nov 24, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) China's Communist government is calling on the booming middle classes to ditch their egalitarian ways and employ more servants to help combat rising unemployment.

Vice Minister of Labor Ling Yongshan said the government was hoping around 15 million "household management or domestic help" jobs would be created in the next few years, the China Daily said Friday.

Ling told a seminar in Beijing this week the government was hoping the demand for domestic help would help ease the pain caused by the closure or reform of loss-making state-owned enterprises which has thrown up to 10 million people out of work each year since 1996.

"There is now the need for a domestic help service in the country's medium-sized and large cities due to the rapidly increasing income levels of urban families," Ling told a seminar in Beijing, according to the report.

"The forecast serves as good news for China's unsatisfactory unemployment situation," he said.

However he said the idea of being a rich man's servant had not filled the ranks of the unemployed with enthusiasm.

"Outdated, traditional preconceptions about servants explains why so few people including laid-off workers from state-owned enterprises are unwilling to take the job," said the paper.

The government is set to boost the household management industry with more training for domestic helpers to increase the quality of their work, and by bringing the sector out of the black economy, said the paper.