China eases household registration rules

The mainland will relax hukou (household registration) controls in all small towns and cities as part of moves to accelerate urbanisation, a State Council report delivered to the National People's Congress Standing Committee said this week.

The State Council Working Report on Urbanisation Construction, which sets goals and priorities for urbanisation, said the government would also free up household registration in mid-sized cities "in an orderly manner" and would gradually relax rules about moving household registrations to big cities.

National Development and Reform Commission chairman Xu Shaoshi said the reforms were aimed at facilitating the transfer of people from rural areas to urban ones.

Between 2010 and 2012, more than 25 million people from rural areas had completed urban household registration.

Chen Yue, director of the Institute of Industrial Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said yesterday that a significant percentage of the mainland's population was being urbanised each year.

"The general tendency of China's urbanisation will not slow down," Chen said. "But it is difficult to complete reform of household registration and public services, such as education, public health and social security, in a short time."