From Reuters, via the International Herald Tribune:
China plans to abolish the legal division between urban and rural residents in 11 provinces to protect the rights of migrants needed for labor in booming cities, though a similar experiment failed four years ago, the official media said Wednesday.
The new policy would drop the decades-old “hukou,” or residence permit, system that has denied millions of rural migrants in Chinese cities the same rights to health care, education and social security as granted to native city dwellers.
See also “Rural dwellers to be granted urban rights” and “‘Small potatoes’ help keep order” from China Daily. Read sociologist Li Yinhe’s views on the inequalities between rural and urban residents in China.