A new wave of “win-win" competition is spreading across China, with successive cities easing residence conditions to attract populations.
The city of Chengdu, with 17 million inhabitants, is considering plans to allow migrants to change their residence status if they buy a home here.
Chengdu has not yet announced an official launch date, but this is the latest in a series of “hukou change of home” efforts that local governments have been implementing over the past few years to deal with the increasingly fierce “war" on talent attraction. This policy not only grants residence rights, but also provides access to public services for home buyers.
In China, the “hukou” system is a special form of residence card, associated with social benefits and is seen as a ticket to quality health and education services but is difficult to achieve in large cities.
According to Luc Minh Dao, Associate Professor of Economics at Beijing Capital University of Economics and Business, the competition is a continuation of the “talent war” that began in 2017, when cities need to maintain population size to develop industries such as finance and culture.
Low birth rates and the crisis of oversupply of real estate are creating an increased need for immigrants to sustain the local economy. Reports show that most major provinces, from provincial capitals to hubs such as Hangzhou and Suzhou, have extended residence rights to home buyers. Even larger northern cities such as Shenyang and Qingdao have adopted more flexible policies when granting residence rights to tenants.
In megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, along with the centrally run city of Tianjin, the authorities have also implemented a policy of “hukou house exchange” in some areas or loosened the point-based residence-level system.
The “talent war" once broke out in 2017, when cities such as Wuhan and Chengdu began attracting university graduates. Now, in the face of declining population realities, this “war" becomes even more drastic in order to ensure sustainable development.
For larger cities, the plan aims to refine the criteria for granting residence based on length of residence and social insurance contributions, while encouraging the removal of annual residence quotas.
At the end of last year, more than two - thirds of China's population lived in cities but that included hundreds of millions of people who did not have official residency status in the areas where they lived.
