Chinese President Xi Jinping today promised to impose strict limits on population growth in the country’s largest cities, state media reported, as authorities seek to push migration towards smaller urban centres. Decades of rapid urbanisation in China have seen the proportion of its urban population swell to more than 50 per cent, creating massive conurbations such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Authorities will “strictly control the size of the population in especially large cities”, Xi said at a meeting of a Communist Party policy group, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Migration in China has for decades been limited by the country’s “hukou,” household registration system, which denies countryside residents equal access to health, education and housing benefits when they move to cities. But Xi said urban registration restrictions would be “fully liberalised” in towns and small cities, while relaxing restrictions in middle-sized cities. The report did not provide […]