- We will advance new urbanization.
Urbanization is the path we need to take to develop a modern China. It is where we will find the greatest potential for domestic demand and the most powerful force for sustaining economic development. This year, we will take the following three major steps regarding urbanization.
First, we will move faster to see that urban residency is granted to more people with rural household registration living in urban areas.
We will deepen reform of the household registration system and relax restrictions on eligibility for urban residency. We will introduce policies for making both the transfer payments and the land designated for urban development granted to the government of a local jurisdiction conditional upon the number of people with rural household registration who are granted permanent urban residency in that jurisdiction. The full range of trials for developing new urbanization will be extended to more areas. Residence cards are important assets for their holders. We must move faster to ensure that permanent urban residents without urban residency are issued residence cards, thus enabling them to enjoy, as provided for by law, the right to access compulsory education, employment, medical care, and other basic public services. We will promote the development of small towns and small and medium-sized cities in the central and western regions to help more rural migrant workers find employment or start businesses in urban areas closer to home so that they do not have to choose between earning money and taking care of the families they leave behind.
Second, we will promote the development of government-subsidized housing in urban areas and the steady and healthy development of the real estate market.
This year, we will see to it that six million housing units are rebuilt in rundown urban areas and that more people displaced by the rebuilding of such areas receive monetary housing compensation rather than housing. We will improve the tax and credit policies for supporting justified personal housing consumption, and ensure that cities take policies appropriate to their local conditions to ease the real estate industry's problem of excess inventory in order to meet the fum demand for housing and the demand for second homes. We will put in place a housing system which encourages both renting and purchasing and, over time, enable eligible non-registered urban residents to apply for public rental housing.
Third, we will redouble our efforts to improve urban planning, development, and management.
We will make urban planning more sound, authoritative, and transparent and encourage local governments to integrate their various types of urban plans into a single master plan. Construction will begin on at least 2,000 kilometers of utility
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