'New urbanization' to benefit migrants

China has mapped out major steps to further advance its "new urbanization" strategy, offering migrant workers broader access to urban public services, strengthening industrial development in less-urbanized areas and promoting a more shared growth of cities.

The steps were rolled out as the State Council, China's Cabinet, recently issued a five-year action plan to carry out a strategy that pursues new urbanization, which reiterated the nation's pledge to put the people first.

China introduced a six-year plan for implementing new urbanization in 2014. A resolution adopted at the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in July pledged to improve the institutions and mechanisms for advancing new urbanization.

Huang Hanquan, head of the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research, said new urbanization, with its emphasis on putting the people first, is significantly different from China's traditional approach to urbanization, which focused on "the expansion of city areas and the construction of tall buildings".

The country will run a campaign to help those who have moved from rural areas to cities enjoy the same rights and fulfill the same obligations as their urban peers, according to the action plan.

Urbanization in China rapidly sped up after the nation embraced a reform and opening-up policy starting from 1978.

Along with the economic takeoff, many rural areas have been developed into cities, and a large number of rural residents, who used to make a living out of farming, left their hometowns to seek jobs in cities. Many of the migrant workers found it challenging to get a hukou, or household registration, for themselves and their family members in the cities.

This prevented them from enjoying the same level of benefits in education, health insurance and other fields as people with a local hukou, thus preventing them from staying in the cities over the long term.

Reiterating the ongoing efforts to lift or loosen restrictions on household registrations across the country, except in the few super-large cities, the action plan has asked cities to come up with ways that suit their own conditions to offer household registrations to new residents coming from rural areas, as well as their family members moving with them.

Local authorities should open up public services that are available for permanent residents, and optimize the layout of public service facilities according to the scale of the permanent population, instead of only focusing on those with a local hukou, it said.

As for children who have moved with their parents to live in cities, their rights to receive education in those cities should be guaranteed, the plan said, adding that public schools should take in a larger proportion of these children.

The need to stabilize the employment of people who moved from rural to urban areas was also stressed, as the State Council called for stronger support for migrant workers, including by providing them with vocational training and enhancing their workplace rights.

Huang said the urbanization of these former rural residents will boost economic growth. The process is expected to increase their income and demand, while a larger number of urban residents will also stimulate more investment in urban public services and facilities.

Permanent urban residents accounted for 66.16 percent of China's total population as of the end of last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. But only 48.3 percent of China's population have an urban hukou.

The 18 percentage-point gap "means there is substantial room for China's urbanization", said Zhang Fei, vice-president of the China Institute for Reform and Development, highlighting the potential for the country's new urbanization to tap.

Zeng Gang, director of the Institute of Urban Development of East China Normal University, said the urbanization of migrant workers is taking on new prospects given the current macroeconomic situation.

He said that many migrant workers are returning from the cities where they work due to a slowing down of the growth of infrastructure projects, a major draw for migrant worker employment.

The action plan designated specific regions — central and southern Hebei, northern Anhui, southwestern Shandong, southeastern Henan, southwestern Hunan, western Guangdong and eastern Sichuan — with tasks to further improve their industries.

These regions have significant potential for urbanization and should make use of their own advantages to develop different industries, including food processing, textiles, advanced manufacturing, energy and chemical industries, and form their own industrial clusters, the plan said.

Zeng said these regions form a large source of migrant workers, and have seen many of them coming back in recent years. In the meantime, they are receiving labor-intensive industries transferred from coastal cities.

All these factors have made them key for the employment of migrant workers, Zeng said, adding that the regions need to develop stronger industrial capacity to help migrant workers find jobs near their homes.

The action plan called for accelerated efforts to improve infrastructure and public services in counties, so that they will become "an important carrier for urbanization".

Xu Guiliang, head of the development and reform bureau of Wulian county in Shandong province, said the action plan has "great significance" in terms of guiding the urbanization of his county.

Wulian has been actively promoting new urbanization, Xu said, adding that more than half of the county's population are permanent urban residents.

Xu said Wulian will seize the opportunity brought by the action plan's favorable policies, and enhance its industries to attract more people to settle down in the county.

"Our goal is to enhance the development of smart, green, balanced and bidirectional urbanization, strengthen the county's capacity to support industry and attract people, and strive to explore a high-quality path for new urbanization."

The action plan also put forward an initiative to cultivate "modernized metropolitan areas", urging super-large cities to transform their development mode at a faster pace, so that cities and counties surrounding them will enjoy shared growth.

It also called for an improvement of railway and subway networks to make people's commuting easier, and better industrial synergy between super-large cities and their smaller neighbors.

Super-large cities should focus on the allocation of global resources, technological innovation and high-end industries, it said, adding that smaller cities should actively take on the industries and functions relocated from larger cities and strengthen industrial collaboration with them.

Zhang, from the China Institute for Reform and Development, said the decision to develop metropolitan areas is a natural result of China's urbanization process.

"At this stage of urbanization, factors of production need to gradually diffuse from central cities to their surrounding areas," Zhang said.

Sound metropolitan areas will help achieve more balanced growth and a more reasonable allocation of public resources, as well as narrow the gap between urban and rural areas, according to Zhang.

Zeng from East China Normal University said China has adopted a more sophisticated approach to urbanization to meet the country's need for high-quality growth.

Referring to the action plan's call for carrying out an urban regeneration and resilience-improvement campaign, he said the country needs to enhance its cities' ability to ward off disasters and make urban living safer, more convenient and more comfortable.

Ouyang Shijia contributed to this story.

wangqingyun@chinadaily.com.cn