About 50 mln rural Chinese have opted for urban household registrations since 2019: ministry

BEIJING, May 27 (Xinhua) -- Around 50 million rural residents in China have turned to cities as the locations of their household registrations since 2019, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said on Monday.

The urbanization rate of the total household registered population in China had reached 48.3 percent by the end of 2023, the MPS said at a press conference.

Li Guozhong, spokesperson for the MPS, told reporters that public security departments across the country have been solidly advancing reforms of the household registration system and cross-provincial administrative services for issues related to ID cards.

The MPS is among the departments which have continuously adjusted policies regarding change of household registrations. So far, most Chinese cities have loosened or abolished restrictions on the settling of household registrations for non-locals.

As of April this year, public security departments had settled over 3.55 million cross-provincial applications for change of household registrations. They had also issued 106 million ID cards through cross-provincial services for those whose cards needed to be replaced or re-issued, saving residents a large amount of time and economic costs.