(Recasts with more quotes)
By Chris Buckley
BEIJING, Jan 24 (Reuters) - China must do more to ease public distress as it battles a slowing economy and rising unemployment, leaders said in statements ahead of the nation's big annual holiday next week.
The calls from Premier Wen Jiabao on Saturday and a meeting on Friday of the ruling Communist Party's Politburo, a 25-member elite council, underscored the government's desire to ease jitters as it prepares to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
Wen told a holiday reception that his government had to focus on shoring up economic growth and generating jobs, the government website (www.gov.cn) reported.
"We must combine encouraging economic development with improving people's welfare," said Wen. "Strive all out to expand employment and improve the social security system, so that the public has more confidence in their lives."
He repeated China's recipe for achieving growth, including an "active fiscal policy and loosened monetary policies.
Chinese officials have said they can reach 8 percent growth this year, seen as the minimum needed to create enough jobs for its migrant workforce and avoid social tensions.
But the fallout of a financial crisis in the developed world has begun to hit China hard and official data this week showing its rate of expansion slowed to 6.8 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. Some economists' forecasts are much bleaker.
After the holiday break, tens of millions of rural workers will head for cities and factories looking for jobs -- which may not be there. And the Politburo meeting also gave a sober warning.
"Our country's economic and social development faces some stark conflicts and problems," said the official summary of the meeting in the People's Daily.
"At present, the main ones are the impact of the international financial crisis and the clear slowing of world economic growth," it said. "Businesses are in hardship and unemployment problems are stark."
But China's difficulties with struggling businesses and growing joblessness are compounded by deeper problems with the country's "crude mode of development", which has bought growth only at a heavy cost, said the report from the meeting.
It listed an imbalanced economic structure, feeble levels of innovation, and inefficient growth as among these deeper strains.
"The price of economic growth in resources and the environment has been too great," it said. (Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Jerry Norton and Patrick Graham)