Zhejiang experiments with domicile reform
By Cai Cai (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-12-28 00:09

East China's Zhejiang Province is striving to introduce a unified household registration management system before the end of 2005.

That indicates all the province's special household registration for farmers will be abolished next year.

Wang Yongming, vice-governor of Zhejiang Province, unveiled the plans at a conference on the province's development and reform in 2005 in Hangzhou, the provincial capital, late last week.

And all the province's farmers will be able to become urban residents in the coming new year, Wang said.

More detailed plans for the reform of the province's household registration system are now being considered by the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Public Security and other government departments and bureaux, Wang said.

The move aims to eliminate the scissors difference between the rural and urban areas and provide equal treatment and social welfare to all the residents in the prosperous province, Wang said.

And the city of Haining took the lead in Zhejiang in the introduction of a unified household registration management system last year.

Starting October of 2003, the Haining Public Security Bureau scrapped all the city's agricultural household registration.

All people, no matter whether urban or rural residents, are considered Haining residents.

Haining residents can freely move their household registration when they move to their new houses.

The reforms in Zhejiang have been conducted in accordance with the province's rapid economic development in recent years.

The urbanization of Zhejiang has reached more than 53 per cent by the end of June, 12.5 percentage points higher than the national average standard.

Many farmers in the province, particularly in the coastal and the Yangtze River Delta regions, have left their farmland to work and live in urban areas or have begun doing business.

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