What's the buzz

Should Beijing reduce the criteria for granting hukou (house registration) to people? And what are the criteria that migrant workers should fulfill to become permanent residents of Beijing? Following are the views of China Daily's mobile news readers:

People should undergo strict scrutiny before getting a hukou (household registration) in Beijing. Also, they should be made to take exams on morality, law, politics and social science, with moral quality playing the key element in the selection process.

AYAN, Beijing

The fact that so many people are desperate to get a Beijing hukou reflects the imbalanced distribution of social resources. If the opportunities and living conditions in other places were as good as that in Beijing, multitudes would not have been queuing up to get a Beijing hukou.

A READER, Dalian, Liaoning province

Only people who pass a series of special tests should be granted a Beijing hukou, because the whole idea is to ensure that all Beijing residents enjoy relatively equal opportunities. If people can get hukou rather easily, Beijing would become an overcrowded city. It is, therefore, necessary to have a strict "admittance examination". Perhaps the Beijing municipal government should improve intercity railway connectivity which, to a certain extent, would extend the privileges enjoyed by Beijing residents to other cities. This would not only relieve the population pressure on Beijing, but also help develop the neighboring regions.

A READER, Taiyuan, Shanxi province

I do not support the proposal because it is discriminatory toward migrant workers. One of the proposed criteria is that a person seeking a Beijing hukou has to be well educated, which is paradoxical because one of the main reasons people are attracted to Beijing is that it has excellent education resources and better social security. Therefore, rather than racking their brains to find ways to control Beijing's overall population, officials should make efforts to figure out how other provinces and cities have improved education, employment and social security levels to retain as well as attract talents.

XIAOXIAMI, Fuzhou, Fujian province

The move to grant Beijing hukou only to people who clear an examination can be counted as "innovative". But the question is, how the topics for the exam will be chosen, how equality will be maintained and will the performance in the exam reflect the true quality and understanding of applicants. To take a step back, the fundamental reason why so many people want a Beijing hukou is the imbalanced distribution of social resources. For example, people who have Beijing hukou enjoy better medical services and greater employment opportunities, and their children get better education. Only when these resources are properly and fairly distributed across the country can people stop scrambling for hukou in cities like Beijing.

FEITIAN, Shanghai

The proposal is improper. The examination and assessment could add to Beijing residents' false sense of superiority, prompting some original residents to despise the migrant population and lead to potential social instability. Also, if the questions in the exam are not fair and objective, the process would be discriminatory against examinees. Besides, it is not fair to decide whether a person can get a Beijing hukou on the basis of just an exam, because it can never reveal a person's true citizenship qualities.

YIYI, Suzhou, Jiangsu province

(China Daily 10/28/2013 page9)