On May 18, China's State Council issued a guideline on providing basic public services based on place of residence, the first national-level policy specifically to address a lingering issue faced by hundreds of millions of migrants.
For decades, under the household registration system, known as the hukou, access to public services depended on where a person is originally registered, rather than where they actually live. China has gradually expanded access to public services for residence permit holders who have lived and worked in a city for at least six consecutive months. Today, roughly three-quarters of basic public services are already available through residence permits rather than the hukou, and 97 percent of migrant children are enrolled in public schools or government-supported programs.
However, affordable rental housing, cross-regional social security account transfer and social assistance have remained difficult for many migrant families.
Today, more than 250 million people live in cities without an urban hukou. Increasingly, entire families are on the move. The challenge facing policymakers is no longer simply how to manage migration of individuals, but how to integrate migrants and their families into urban life.
A major highlight of the document is the "package solution" for the education of migrant children. The policy extends coverage beyond compulsory education to include preschool and senior high school. This means that children can complete their entire education from kindergarten through high school in the cities where their parents live.
Another highlight is the focus on reducing the costs of mobility for the migrant population. It calls to promote mutual recognition of residence permits, as well as the convertibility of accumulated years of residence and points across jurisdictions. Zhejiang has already taken the lead in establishing a province-wide system of mutual recognition, allowing workers who move between cities within the province to carry over their accumulated residence time as points for local hukou registration application. This effectively means that migrants no longer need to reset their residency-related records when relocating to another city.
The guidelines also expand housing support, requiring more cities to include longterm residents without a local hukou in public low-rent housing programs, which means migrant families who work and live in a city may gain access to affordable housing even without a local hukou registration.
In social security and healthcare, the policy removes household registration restrictions on enrollment in employee social insurance at the place of work and seeks to improve the transfer of benefits across regions. This means flexible and gig workers will have social security in the places they actually work. In healthcare, residence permit holders enrolled in urban and rural medical insurance programs will receive the same level of government subsidies as locals.
It is also important to recognize that this is a gradual reform. The document emphasizes a tailored, place-based approach and rejects a "one-size-fits-all" model. Megacities are encouraged to explore their own policies suited to their own conditions, while cities experiencing population inflows are urged to do their best within their means to provide the services.
The direction is clear and the path is defined. The document represents both a concrete response to public concerns and a source of vitality for urban development.
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