China to emphasize people-oriented urbanization

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, in a new government work report, set further reform of the household registration system as one of China’s priorities in 2016, signifying that China will continue its urbanization with an emphasis on people.

In the report delivered at the fourth session of the 12th National People’s Congress Saturday, Li also vowed to accelerate urbanization among rural migrants and link urbanization with people, land and funds.

The quality and internal capacity of urbanization must be improved through “people-oriented urbanization,” the report stressed.

Li’s remarks came as China, in recent years, has devoted itself to a new type of urbanization. But as a country with a large agricultural population, plenty of problems have arisen in the process.

Some cities, for example, kept expanding regardless of their population growth, giving rise to ghost cities of empty streets and skyscrapers.

Those cities failed to understand that the core of urbanization is not house building, but people.

By pegging financial transfer payment with urban residency of rural populations, new urban development with urban household registration of rural populations, and infrastructure investments with farming populations, local governments will urbanize more rural residents.