After working in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen for seven years, electronic products dealer Yi Deqing and his wife cannot make up their minds whether or not to buy an apartment.
“We hope we can settle down here, but without a hukou (registered permanent residence), we don’t feel like the city is home,” said Yi.
The latest official figures show that the city is housing 10.71 million people on its less than 2,000 square kilometres of land, of whom a dominant majority, or about 9 million, belongs to a mobile population without hukou.
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