How will hukou reform benefit hundreds of millions of people?

Accelerating hukou system reform is a key reform task set out by the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee. In order to implement this reform, which benefits hundreds of millions of people, the State Council recently issued the "Opinions on Further Advancing the Reform of the Hukou System." As the programmatic document guiding all localities in advancing hukou system reform at present and for some time to come, its reform intensity, scope and concrete measures exceed all previous hukou system reforms, demonstrating the firm determination of the Party Central Committee and the State Council to deepen reform and to carry out well the good deeds that benefit the people.

Hukou system reform has attracted much attention because it concerns the vital interests of ordinary people. Whether it is schooling and employment, marriage and childbearing, or social welfare, food, clothing, housing and transportation, the hukou is tied together with personal interests. For a long time, because urban residents and rural residents, and local residents and non-local residents, have different household registration, there have been significant differences in many social welfare and public services attached to household registration, such as education, medical care and social security. Accelerating hukou system reform, tearing down the fences of interest that stand between different groups of people, and advancing social fairness and justice are the Party Central Committee and the State Council's active response to the urgent calls of the broad masses of the people.

Accelerating hukou system reform will have a far-reaching impact on the steady and sound development of China's economy and society. With the establishment of the socialist market economy system, labor mobility has continued to accelerate. Hukou system reform helps break down many shackles and barriers to the free flow of labor, thereby forming a unified national labor market and letting the market play a decisive role. More importantly, in the period ahead, advancing urbanization is a major task for China's economic and social development. The core of urbanization is the urbanization of people. By 2020, 100 million people will newly settle in cities and towns. Whether the hard ice of hukou system reform can be broken and whether hundreds of millions of people transferred out of agriculture can become urban residents directly bears on the success or failure of the building of a new type of urbanization.

Hukou system reform is a complex systematic project, and this must be fully understood. First, the hukou system is the "root directory" for formulating and implementing numerous economic and social policies, and once adjusted it will trigger chain reactions. Hukou system reform is closely related to reforms in the basic old-age insurance system, public health services, the examination and enrollment system, the housing security system, rural property rights, and fiscal support. The progress of each reform will have a huge impact on other reforms, so reforms in multiple fields and at multiple levels need to be carried out in a coordinated and mutually reinforcing way. Second, hukou system reform is not merely a change on paper; the key is that the people who settle down enjoy the corresponding welfare and treatment. Hukou system reform inevitably means a large amount of investment. Its core problem lies in the fact that many public service and social welfare policies are linked to household registration, and they have been formed over a long time, involve many fields, and are highly difficult to coordinate. Third, hukou system reform involves hundreds of millions of people and must necessarily take into account the demands of all sides. Different groups have different needs in social life, and sometimes their demands differ from or even oppose one another, making coordination relatively difficult.

The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee pointed out the direction and clarified the path for accelerating hukou system reform. The issuance of the "Opinions" further refined specific policy measures, and all localities will accordingly formulate differentiated settlement policies and implementation plans and make them public to the whole society. In the next step, it is necessary both to encourage all localities to practice boldly and explore actively, and to guide local areas to grasp the objective laws of the urbanization process, with each locality formulating specific measures in light of local conditions according to the comprehensive carrying capacity of resources and the environment and development potential of different regions, so that hukou system reform benefits hundreds of millions of ordinary people.

The issuance of the "Opinions" is a solid step forward in China's hukou system reform and marks the beginning of the stage of full implementation of this reform. Although the road ahead is still fraught with difficulties, with the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, and the concerted efforts of Party committees and governments at all levels and relevant departments, continuously solving reform difficulties through practical work, by 2020 the goal will surely be achieved of basically establishing a new type of hukou system that is compatible with building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, effectively supports social management and public services, safeguards citizens' rights in accordance with the law, and is people-centered, scientific, efficient, standardized and orderly.