China to promote urbanization rate beyond 60 percent for 2019
China is relaxing restrictions on hukou, or household registration, in major second-tier and third-tier cities for decisive progress in helping 100 million migrant workers who currently lack the registration to obtain it.
The government is comprehensively scrapping restrictions in large cities with populations between 1 million and 3 million in 2019, according to a circular issued by the National Development and Reform Commission on Monday.
The move is part of a comprehensive drive to promote China's new-type urbanization, which, among other goals, calls for helping 100 million people who currently live in cities but lack an urban household registration to become registered.
This year is a decisive year in realizing the goal of "building a moderately prosperous society in all respects," the circular said, calling for improving the urbanization rate by 1 percentage point.
In 2018, China's urbanization rate stood at 59.58 percent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics in January.
In 2018, nearly 14 million rural people who had moved to cities gained their hukou registration, according to the Government Work Report delivered by Premier Li Keqiang in March.
The rural population working in cities, graduates with a college education or those with vocational training, and the migrant labors from other cities are categorized as key groups encouraged to obtain hukou in their current cities.
The circular calls for large cities with a population between 3 million and 5 million to comprehensively relax hukou curbs and completely remove restrictions on key targeted groups.
Super-large cities are urged to adjust their quota system with an aim to increase the scale of hukou endowment and streamline the points system for household registration.
Permanent residents living in rental housing in cities will be allowed to apply for public hukou.
The circular also called for government providing better public services such as education and medical care.
The building of city clusters, addressing the rural-urban divide, better investment and financing schemes for cities are also listed as tasks to be addressed in 2019.
