Special group, equal treatment
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The China Institute for Reform and Development recently asked experts for their opinion on rural reforms during the 12th Five-Year Plan period. Nearly 80 percent of the respondents said basic requirements to fundamentally solve the problems of rural migrant workers will be in place during the plan period.
This is not only imperative but also feasible due to quite a few conditions in its favor.
Granting migrant workers urban citizenship will help dismantle the dual urban-rural hukou system.
This can be done in two steps.
During the first three years of the 12th Five-Year Plan period, urban citizenship in small and medium-sized cities should be thrown open to migrant rural workers. In the subsequent two years, urban citizenship in large cities can be granted to these workers.
Toward the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan period, the temporary residence permits held by migrant rural workers should be changed into "residence permits" and they must be free to reside anywhere in the nation and be administered under a unified national policy.
Granting citizenship to migrant rural workers must be considered a turning point in equal public services delivery for all.
The task of ensuring minimum basic public services for migrant workers has become a pressing concern. The basic level of social security that migrant rural workers could count upon in 2006 was just one-quarter of what urban citizens did routinely.
Although the gap has narrowed in recent years, social security institutions meant for the urban and rural populations are still separate.
If migrant workers are granted their just entitlements with regard to basic public services, then citizenship in urban areas will be a far easier task. This will ensure that both urban and rural areas get equal access to basic public services over the next ten years.
The cross-regional flow of migrant workers has increased over the years. This means unified policies must be promulgated to ensure they enjoy basic public services roughly on par with local citizens no matter where they are being employed.
Two urgent issues need to fixed.
The first is the nine-year compulsory education policy for the children of rural migrant workers. A national compulsory education coupon system is strongly recommended. That is, the government must distribute education coupons to all school-age children of migrant workers in order to enable them to live and study wherever their parents are working.
An education fund can be allocated to schools based on the coupons they collect. Or, the government could allocate funds based on the actual number of students the schools recruit.
Second, the government should lose no time in establishing a basic social security system that also covers rural migrant workers. Effective ways must be explored to link up the rural medical cooperative system and urban basic medical care system.
Innovations in the institutional land rights arrangement of migrant rural workers must also be undertaken to unify the urban-rural land system. The dual urban-rural institutional arrangements for land, especially the basic social security function attached to rural land, is the prime reason why migrant rural workers are being excluded from urban basic public services.
So, in the 12th Five-Year Plan period, the institutional arrangements for land owned by migrant workers must be tweaked. Part of the government's revenue from land should be earmarked to provide basic housing security for rural migrant workers.
The author is president of the China Institute for Reform and Development.
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