China's urbanization puts people at center

China's new approach to urbanization has made the year 2013 a turning point, especially for the 260 million migrant workers who await the benefits of the change.

After decades of urban expansion, city dwellers now account for 52.6 percent of the country's total population, if calculated by total usual residents, according to Vice Public Security Minister Huang Ming. This figure falls to 35.3 percent of the population if calculated based on "hukou," or household registration.

China's hukou system ties public services such as health care and education to residential status. Those without local hukou are usually barred from sending children to public schools and many, particularly migrants, are left with few choices but to send children to schools back home. Those without local hukou also face tougher restrictions on housing and car purchases.

The 17-point gap between the two "populations" exposes the gap between public welfare for the locally registered population and for newcomers unable to register -- largely migrant workers.

LABOR ONLY

"For a long time, China's urban areas have demanded labor from rural migrants, but offered little in return," said Wang Xiaoguang of the Chinese Academy of Governance. "No public welfare, let alone housing. This unfairness demands a change in state strategy."

As a migrant who left his rural home for a job in the city of Chongqing in 1992, Xu Shuping, 50, certainly knows the difference between the lives of registered residents and those of migrants.

Despite years in the city as a welder for a natural gas company, he was denied equal access to public welfare until 2010 when he changed his hukou status.

At Xu's rural home, his son had to wake up at 6 a.m. and walk for up to two hours to school each morning. This daily ordeal prompted Xu to attempt a change of hukou status so his son could be educated in the city.

However, before Chongqing started its pilot hukou reform ahead of the rest of the country in 2010, the rigid system restricted status change. Xu was unsuccessful because a change would have required a vocational college degree and a formal employment contract, two restrictions that prevent many migrant workers from becoming real city folk.

While restrictions are still in force in other parts of China, Chongqing has enabled about 4 million migrants to change hukou status.

"I have a stable job, pension, health care and my son goes to a city school. I don't see much difference between me and other city dwellers," Xu said.

　HUMAN-CENTERED

Urbanization over the last three decades has focused on the expansion of city areas while ignoring the needs of migrant workers for equal public services, said Zheng Fengtian, a professor with Renmin University of China. Human-centered urbanization is the way to fix the issue nationwide, he added.

Aware of the downsides of the existing strategy of simply increasing city size, the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward a "new type of urbanization," which says "people come first."

At the third plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee, the CPC incorporated human-centered urbanization into an approved policy, calling it the core of urbanization.

On Dec. 13, the CPC specified the primary task of human-centered urbanization as helping migrants to register as urban residents, which would give them and their accompanying families the same rights as any other urban residents.

At another policy meeting days later, the CPC set the target of a new hukou status for 100 million migrant workers by the end of 2020.

Zheng said that if pure expansion of city area defined the old urbanization mode, then the feature of the new type of urbanization would be granting migrants hukou in cities.

HUKOU CHANGE

To help migrant workers, the hukou system itself needs to change, and the government has accelerated changes to the hukou system several times in past months. Most notably, at the third plenum, it decided to remove controls over farmers settling in towns and small cities, and relax restrictions on settlement in medium-sized cities.

Moreover, the government has pledged to make basic urban public services like health care and education available to all permanent residents and to have all rural residents covered by the affordable housing system and social security network.

Researcher Wang Xiaoguang said "available for all" means equal access to public services for both migrant workers and urban residents -- a move to redress the huge imbalance between the two.

On Dec. 17, the timetable for reform became clear. Huang Ming, vice public security minister, told Xinhua that a new hukou system would make stable employment and housing the requirements for urban status by 2020.

The public security ministry, together with another 11 central ministries, has drawn up a plan for hukou reform and will publish it after some revisions. The details of the plan are still unknown.

The plan will be a guide for local governments to make more specific implementation plans.