Premier Wen Jiabao told the parliament Friday China will further reform its decades-long household registration system, or hukou, in 2010 as a move to push forward urbanization and shorten the urban-rural gap.

Restrictions on permanent residence registration in towns and small and medium-sized cities would be relaxed this year, Wen said in a government work report submitted to the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC).

"We will allow eligible workers who have left agricultural work to gradually become urban residents," he said.

First issued in 1958, the hukou system classes China's population into "rural" and "non-rural" categories, and has long been blamed as a cause of widening gap between urban and rural residents.

The differentiation denies rural people equal access to public services such as education, medical care, housing and employment, when they move to cities and towns, regardless of how long they may have lived or worked there.

In the report, Wen said China will solve employment and living problems rural migrant workers face in cities and towns in a "planned and step-by-step" manner.

The country would gradually ensure the migrant workers receive the same treatment as urban residents in areas such as pay, children's education, healthcare, housing, and social security, he said.

Meanwhile, the country would further push forward its urbanization and development in its rural areas, according to the Premier.

"We will keep to the path of urbanization with Chinese characteristics, ... and promote positive interaction between urbanization and the building of a new countryside," he said, urging strengthened economy, improved infrastructure and environmental protection in the country's county towns and hub towns.

Wen said the country would guide an orderly flow of nonagricultural industries and rural people to small towns, and encourage returned rural migrant workers to start businesses in their hometown.

When developing urban and rural areas, the country must adhere to the strictest possible systems for protecting arable land and economizing land use to genuinely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of farmers, he said.

He also pledged to build "a beautiful rural environment" for farmers by upgrading rural power grids, expanding the construction of rural methane facilities, providing safe drinking water to another 60 million rural people, carrying out the project to build a clean countryside, and improving working and living conditions.

(Xinhua News Agency March 5, 2010)