Tianlei Huang Yeling Tan
China’s leaders have long sought to lift their people out of poverty and drive overall economic growth by encouraging migration from rural to urban areas, where people can find better jobs, earn more, and spend more. But, to prevent big cities from being swamped with migrants, the government has also restrained internal migration through multiple policies. The ruling Communist Party at its recent major meeting—usually referred to as its third plenum—released plans to relax some of these restrictions to spur more movement, particularly to smaller cities with fewer than 5 million people. These measures represent a notable shift away from some outdated features of China’s labor, land, and fiscal systems. Success, however, could depend on clearing two potential hurdles—the party’s lack of a strategy for generating the jobs needed to attract rural migrants to smaller cities and the potential resistance of local government authorities who would face fiscal challenges serving growing populations in those areas.
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