The State Council, China's Cabinet, released a plan on Tuesday to help 100 million non-native residents, most of whom live in urban areas while registered in their rural birthplace, to gain household registration, or hukou, in cities.
The goal is to transfer the rural hukou of more than 13 million residents to urban ones annually during the country's 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), as a move to break the urban-rural divide, according to the State Council's official website.
Big cities are required to reduce the threshold for obtaining hukou and the majority of cities are asked to raise the quota especially for rural residents who study in cities or live in cities after joining the army.
The plan also calls for relaxing the restrictions for migrant workers on obtaining hukou in the cities they live or work. China's rate of urban residents with hukou will be raised to 45 percent by the end of 2020, said the plan.
People who acquire urban hukou after the release of the policy must enjoy equal treatment with locals in terms of housing, insurance and education, the plan added.
Implementation of the policy will also be supervised and checked by national authorities, and cities offering higher quotas for the migrants will receive government subsidy.
China has around 253 million non-native residents in cities, according to a study from Guan Xingping, dean of the Sociology Department in the College of Zhou Enlai Government and Administration, Nankai University, published by the Paulson Institute in November 2015.
