(File photo)

A total of 25 provinces, regions and cities have unveiled their reform plans for their household registration systems and China urges all areas to establish their plans by the end of 2015, said a top Chinese economic planning official at a press conference.

Xu Shaoshi, director of China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), announced the current situation nationwide about guidelines for the 13th Five-Year Plan saying that one of the core aims for new urbanization is to increase the urbanization ratio based on the number of registered residents.

Citing a national plan on urbanization for the 2016-2020 period, the document said by 2020, about 45 per cent of the whole registered population will be living in urban areas and urbanization of permanent residents aims to reach 60 per cent.

The number of people who actually live in cities is 749 million, 54.77 per cent of the whole population, including nearly 250 million migrant workers who have lived in urban areas for more than six months and their relatives. If these migrant workers are excluded, it leaves around 500 million people who are actually registered in urban areas with the urbanization rate being 36.3 per cent.

Xu mentioned that China will deepen reform of the household registration system to let the whole family of migrant workers who are able to find stable jobs in urban areas register in cities and thus enjoy equal education, employment rights and social security services.