Household registration

The Ministry of Public Security has announced that, starting on Sept 1, non-permanent residents of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing and Tianjin will be able to go to a local entry and exit management department to apply for a passport. 

In the past, they had to return to the city where their household is registered to get that important travel document. 

The change is meant to make it easier for non-permanent residents of big cities to travel overseas. But it doesn't come without restrictions. For one, non-permanent residents will not be able to get a passport unless they can furnish a certificate from their local social security department showing that they have paid into the local social security system for at least a year. 

This is a far cry from reforming China's long-debated household registration system, which withholds benefits from hundreds of millions of people who live and work in cities where they are not officially registered as permanent residents. 

As in many countries, various regions in China have not all developed, both socially and economically, to the same extent. Big cities, such as the aforementioned six, tend to offer more and better-paying jobs. 

As a result, many migrant workers, college graduates and even some quite wealthy people have flocked to those places. Beijing is home to more than 7 million people who live and work in the city despite not having a local household registration. Such residents make up 35.9 percent of the population. 

In 2004, Beijing stopped charging migrant workers extra fees for putting their children in local schools. Five years later, the central government extended such a policy to all non-permanent residents in the country. 

Even so, students who are not permanent residents of the cities where they are studying still must return to their home cities or towns to take college entrance examinations. And they still cannot get many of the social benefits they are entitled to, no matter how long they have worked in a particular place. 

True, local officials, particularly those in big cities, are afraid that providing such benefits will prove too costly. 

That only shows that, if residents are to obtain all they are entitled to, the household registration system must be reformed.