China is making it easier for rural residents to settle in small cities that have fewer than three million inhabitants, under plans by the state economic planner to speed up urbanization.

The move to scrape migrant restrictions within the country was aimed at encouraging people from rural areas to move into cities and urbanize suburbs at a faster pace, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a notice issued recently.

Central authorities, state-level departments and provincial governments should provide migrants from villages and their children with swift procedures to transfer their “hukou,” or household registration, to cities, the notice said.

City officials should increase publicly funded school places and teachers to deal with incoming new migrants, and extend public services to those who have not yet registered their hukou locally.

The commission also suggested that mega metropolitan regions such as the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Yangtze Delta improve intercity railroad links and introduce common e-payment systems.

In mainland China, household registrations are mainly divided into rural and urban registers. The hukou of a person decides the education, job opportunities, welfare and health care to which he is entitled.

Calls have gone on for years to scrap the discriminatory hukou system altogether, and in 2019, the commission issued a notice requiring all but 13 cities to relax restrictions on migrants.

Some cities in the central provinces did take active steps to follow the 2019 drive, but their aim was to retain professionals and educated talent, Beijing-based commentator Wu Qiang told Apple Daily.

China today needed to speed up urbanization to support its domestic economy amid growing tensions with the United States and other foreign countries, Wu said.

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