Southwest China's Chongqing Municipal Government has rolled out new regulations to reform the household registration system (or hukou), which took effect on August 1 this year. The aim is to turn 10 million farmers into urban citizens in the next 10 years. The move, described by media as "an icebreaking tour," will serve as a significant reference for the whole nation whether it succeeds or not. Yang Lan, a well-known veteran TV hostess, recently interviewed Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifan about the background and necessity of the reform. Excerpts follow:

Yang Lan: Why is Chongqing launching household registration reform?

Huang Qifan: China considers urbanization and industrialization the driving forces of long-term development in the next three decades. The nature of urbanization is not simply to incorporate rural migrant workers into the urban population, but to reduce the number of farmers by turning the rural population into urban residents. Otherwise, urbanization will turn out to be a mirage in the desert 20 years from now, when rural migrant workers become old and return to the countryside.

Has there been any response from migrant workers since the new regulations took effect on August 1?

Several thousand farmers have received urban resident status since August 1, due to joint promotion by local police stations, enterprises and factories having relations with farm workers and rural migrant households. The pace is fairly fast.

The Chongqing Municipal Government has introduced a series of key policies in recent years, including setting up a land exchange office, introducing IT businesses to offer hundreds of thousands of jobs, and building a large amount of public housing for rent. Were all these efforts intentional or just coincidental to pave the way for hukou reform?

China has long cherished the unitary development of urban and rural areas, which means migrant workers enjoy the same public urban infrastructure facilities, insurance measures and distribution of resources. What we have done in the past two years has actually targeted household registration reform; otherwise, hukou reform will not be promoted on a solid foundation.

For example, after acquiring urban resident status, migrant workers will move their families to the cities. If there was inadequate housing for them to rent in the cities, this population of over 1 million could become a threat to social stability.

If migrant workers in Chongqing come from other provinces, is it necessary to ask them to hand in their house-site land or their contracted arable land to authorities?

Actually, it is only reasonable that rural migrant workers, whether they are local farmers or coming from other provinces, should be given urban resident status as long as they have worked in the downtown area of Chongqing for over five years. In Chongqing, however, local people account for 98 percent, and people from other provinces only 2 percent. So it is not necessary to ask these people to turn over the land they have in their own provinces to Chongqing, because the land is their own. Those workers in Chongqing are a dynamic force driving the development of the city and have made contributions to the municipality.

Some urban residents hope migrant workers will work during the day and return home at night, living as "mud snails." Others agree that migrant workers should receive urban household status, but they worry that the increase in the population will dilute their social welfare benefits. How would you persuade people to accept urban resident status for rural migrant workers?

There are some points that should be made clear. First, the process of urbanization and industrialization is not for cities' self-improvement and elevation, but a process to turn migrant workers into urban residents.

Second, migrant-workers-turned-urban-residents will not threaten the welfare of original urban residents, but rather enhance it, for most of the farmers who will become urban citizens were born in the 1980s and 1990s, which will lower the average age of the city's population and thus postpone the aging of society.

And finally, many original urban residents themselves were migrants from other places. Take my family as an example. My parents are not Shanghainese, but I was born in Shanghai and have become a Shanghai original resident. So why is it that even though children of rural migrant workers living in cities, they still do not feel they are original urban citizens and are still rural farmers 20 years later? That is unfair. If that happens, my generation will be seen as shortsighted and immoral.

(Source: Chongqing Evening News)