China plans for 60% urban population

Some 100 million migrant workers and other permanent urban residents can expect to be registered as urbanites by 2020, as China vows a people-centered and environmentally friendly path to urbanization.

The ratio of permanent urban residents to total population should reach 60 percent, while residents with an urban household registration, or hukou, should make up 45 percent of the total population, according to the National Newtype Urbanization Plan (2014-2020) released on Sunday by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council.

Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that China's proportion of permanent urban residents stood at 53.7 percent and those with urban hukou accounted for 35.7 percent of total population by the end of 2013.

The number of rural migrant workers rose to 268.94 million in 2013, 19.76 percent of the total population, according to the NBS.

"We have the capacity to achieve the goal as long as authorities show enough determination. The key is to guarantee the stability of migrant workers coming to cities and that means assuring job opportunities and social welfare attached to the hukou," said Xiao Mingzheng, a professor with the School of Government at Peking University.

Helping migrant workers into a stable job will also ease the government's financial burden, he noted.

Controls over settling in towns and small cities will be lifted. Restrictions on access to medium-size cities will also be relaxed in an orderly manner, requiring big cities to house 3 to 5 million people which will have clear and reasonable criteria for hukou application.

However, megacities will be able to regulate and control newcomers through a points system.

Shanghai, Guangzhou and Tianjin have already implemented such a system, which usually judges applicants on points gained from aspects including educational background and social security records. Beijing has yet to implement the system, and this may be because it is the capital and therefore its situation as regards workers is different, said Xiao.

He noted that a scoring system could prevent people from flooding into megacities blindly under a coordinated and unified acceptance standard as well as providing quotas according to what kind of skilled migrants are in demand.

While a points system for a hukou for a city like Beijing is still flawed, it may be the best method available, but it should reduce its population first, said Luo Yameng, an urbanization expert in Beijing.

"The scoring system is shameful and unfair, as it judges people on their education, and migrant workers might lag behind others," he said.

Beijing recently decided to relocate a clothing wholesale market to "upgrade" the city's industries, ease the population and traffic pressure and replace low-end industries with "high-end" ones.

Sheng Guangyao, an associate research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said that many megacities are focused on development of high-end industries.

Many migrant workers involved in low-end industries will find it easier to find a job in small- and medium-size cities, Sheng noted.