CHINA now has more than 5.5 million private enterprises, domestic media said yesterday, suggesting they are further consolidating their position in the officially socialist economy.

The figure, taken at the end of June, was released by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, the (((China Daily))) reported.

Private enterprises in China are defined as companies in private hands with at least eight employees.

A bigger category consists of individual enterprises, run by either one person or a family, and with a staff of up to seven employees, of which there were 26.2 million at the end of June, the paper said.

Comparable figures for the end of June last year were not available.

More than 70 percent of urban employees were now working in private enterprises or in individual industrial and commercial entities, Xinhua said.

In the first nine months of the year, private enterprises paid 348.7 billion yuan (US$47.0 billion) in taxes, or 9.4 percent of the country's corporate tax revenue, the paper said.

(SD-Agencies)