New regulations for permanent Beijing resident permits announced

On Aug. 11, Beijing Municipal government unveiled a new set of trial regulations for permanent Beijing resident permits based on a point system, which will be put into effect on Jan 1, 2017.

According to the trial regulation, applicants for the permit, called “hukou” in Chinese, should be under the mandatory retirement age, have a temporary resident permit, and have paid social premiums in the city for at least seven consecutive years. They also shouldn’t have a criminal record.

In order to obtain the hukou, they should acquire points based on several factors, including employment, dwelling condition, educational background, living and working area, entrepreneurship, tax payment, age, honors and awards, and criminal record.

The points also serve functions to control demographics of the city. For example, in an attempt to optimize population structure, applicants under the age of 45 can get 20 points for being young, while those above 45 don’t get age-related points.

For redistributing the population of Beijing, those moving from the six districts in central Beijing to the suburbs for work or housing can acquire additional points.

According to an official from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform, needed points will be determined on a yearly basis, depending on the size of the applicant pool and the city’s population targets.

As a result, candidates will submit an application first and then the Beijing government will then define points and population goals.

In fact, this latest move in Beijing is one of several recent steps taken to reform China's hukou system, which has divided the nation into rural and urban populations since the 1950s as way of controlling population flow.

Legal Daily said that the application condition may vary from year to year, so the points needed and the number of approved permanent resident permits will be different in different years.

The new trial regulation also stipulates that the results should be publicly displayed. Applicants who have acquired needed points can then get permanent Beijing resident permits.

Any candidates who use fraud to inflate their points will be stripped of their applicant qualifications for that year and barred from applying for a permanent resident permit for the next five years.