Development and Reform Commission issued a document to clearly relax the restrictions on settling in cities with less than 3 million

China’s National Development and Reform Commission recently issued a document “2021 new urbanization and urban-rural integration development key tasks”, proposed the orderly liberalization and relaxation of urban settlement restrictions. Among them, cities with a resident population of less than 3 million in urban areas to implement the policy of full abolition of household restrictions.

The document emphasizes that the key tasks of this policy are to promote the orderly and effective integration of agricultural transfer population into cities, enhance the carrying capacity of city clusters and metropolitan areas, promote the coordinated development of large, medium and small cities and small towns, improve urban governance, accelerate the development of urban-rural integration, etc.

It requires that the settlement policy of cities with less than 3 million people should treat renters and purchasers equally, allow permanent residents of rental houses to settle in public households, and do a good job of relaxing settlement, talent introduction and real estate regulation, etc.

This policy document was issued more than a year ago. at the end of 2019, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council issued a notice calling for the full abolition of restrictions on settlement in cities with a permanent population of less than three million in urban areas and the full relaxation of the conditions for settlement in large cities with a permanent population of three million to five million in urban areas. At the same time, it is required to improve the policy of settling households in mega and mega cities with a permanent population of more than five million in urban areas, streamline the number of points, and ensure that the number of years of social insurance payment and the number of years of residency score take up a major proportion.

At the time, some scholars pointed out that these practices were not primarily aimed at hoping that the population of large cities would flow into smaller ones, or at solving the livelihoods of migrant workers, but rather at accelerating urbanization and increasing purchasing power to rescue the persistently sluggish Chinese economy.