農民工市民化 (nongmingong shiminhua): Urbanization of migrant workers

On Monday, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held a meeting on next year's economic and urban work. The meeting stressed the need to give top priority to "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" and promote the official integration of migrant workers with the registered urban population.

Currently there are 750 million people living in urban areas, but 250 million of them are migrant workers who don't have registered permanent residence in the cities where they live and work. These people contribute a lot to the prosperity of urban areas, but don't have the same rights as registered urban residents and cannot enjoy basic public services such as education and healthcare.

The urban registration of migrant workers is key to accelerating the process of urbanization in the future. The 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) suggests taking more measures to promote the "urbanization of people" in the next stage, which should let new residents who have migrated from rural areas enjoy urban public services and really settle down in the cities.

Yet this will be a challenging task that should be supported by heavy financial support for public services, particularly in education and medical fields.