BEIJING, June 9, 2006 -- China aims to help 50,000 blind people to become professional masseurs in five years from 2006 so as to help improve their living conditions through providing training and other forms of support, according to a national program on people with disabilities.

"That will push the total number of blind massage therapists to140,000," says the program on developing the cause of people with disabilities in the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006-2010).

According to the program, released Thursday with the approval of the State Council, or the central government, 40,000 of the new massagists will be working in medical fields while 10,000 others are employed in general health care fields.

In China, massage is believed to be the most suitable job for people with impaired sight as they have more sensitive hands.

"More professional masseurs who have received formal training enter our business will help us rebuild our credit," said Yang Xinghua, 43, a blind masseur in Beijing.

Engaged in the career for two full decades, Yang is now worrying that the whole business will collapse as more and more fake blind massage parlors emerge.

Despite hanging signs to brag "best blind massage therapists", young girls with normal vision were often employed instead of blind people as masseuses, Yang acknowledged.

"These illegal massage parlors, without official business licenses, have tarnished our reputation. Now, blind masseurs and dirty sex traders, originally two different ideas, often came to people's mind at the same time," Yang complained.

In addition to support in personal training, Yang deemed that the government should launch a tough crackdown drive to put the entire business in order.

In Fuzhou, capital city of east China's Fujian Province, only 124 massage parlors opened by the blind people get official approvals, while those without any licenses exceed 600, 80 percent of which provide sex services.

"People now try to bypass those parlors as far as possible," said Chen Dong, an employee with the city's employment guidance center for the disabled.

Earning a monthly salary of over 1,000 yuan (around 125 U.S. dollars) in some cases, blind people with massage skills usually enjoy relatively high living standards among their folks with disabilities.

More blind people, eager to start their new lives, join the business only after a short period of informal training or without training at all. To scrabble for larger market shares, they lower prices from the normal 50 yuan per hour on the average to 10 or 20yuan.

"Once exposed to their poor service, customers not only pour their rage over those particular masseurs who offer the service, but also cast a general distrust in the whole business," Chen Dong said.

But experts noted that the management of blind massage parlors requires cooperation among different departments on labor, industry and commerce, health as well as the disabled work, which is unlikely to be realized in a short period of time.

The first national survey on disabilities in 1987 revealed that China had about 60 million people with disabilities, of whom 8.77 million are visually handicapped.

The country is currently conducting its second national survey on disabled people, with the new figures likely to be releases at the end of this year and the number of people with impaired sight expected to double.

Sources with the Ministry of Health said in April that China has about 4.5 million new blind people every year.

"As the number continues to grow, blind people thus meet with greater pressure in terms of employment and education in today's modern digital society," said Li Weihong, director of the China Association for the Blind (CAB).

He added that blind people used to work in the social welfare sectors from the 1950s to the 1980s, but later moved to massage industry in the 1990s.

About 5,000 blind people were trained and then transferred to the massage sector early in 1996 when the China Massage Association of Blind Practitioners was set up to help blind people better get employed.

At present, more than 90,000 blind people have been trained and work as massage practitioners.

"They cannot see, but they get a new lease of life in massage since most of them are now able to depend on themselves for their livelihoods," Li said.

Training blind massagists constitutes only part of the national endeavor to help China's 60 million people with disabilities acquire working capabilities, which is "the main ways for these people to improve their living conditions, realize independence and display their value in life," notes the program.

According to the program, China provided job training and practical skills training to 5.73 million people with disabilities in the past five years. Two million rural people and 1.67 million urban people with disabilities found jobs during this period.

The program has set the target of helping another 750,000 urbanites with disabilities to find jobs and keeping the employment level of rural people with disabilities at 18 million in the next five years.

At the end of 2005, 18 million rural people with disabilities had jobs while 4.64 million urban people with disabilities were employed too.