(Yicai) Aug. 11 -- Jiangsu has become the latest Chinese province to relax its policy on permanent residency in a bid to speed up the region’s urbanization.

Jiangsu will end all restrictions on household registration across the province, except for the urban areas of Nanjing and Suzhou, to help people living in the countryside move into its cities, the local government said in a recent notice.

The change will allow people not born in Jiangsu who live and work in the province to buy homes and educate their children there.

Zhejiang’s government also said last month that it would remove all restrictions on household registration, a system known as hukou in Chinese, with the exception of the provincial capital of Hangzhou. Shandong and Jiangxi in the east and southeast previously issued policy documents allowing non-local residents to freely obtain hukou.

Jiangsu and Zhejiang are two of the most economically developed regions of China. The change in their policy means that migrants to dynamic cities such as Ningbo, Wuxi, Wenzhou, and Changzhou can now make long-term plans to settle down there.

When two-thirds of the permanent population is in urban areas, the focus should shift to improving the quality of urbanization, said Ding Changfa, associate professor of economics at Xiamen University.

Easing hukou rules in cities with large population inflows is also crucial for transforming and upgrading local industries, he added.

Editor: Emmi Laine