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This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
China is considering extending the hukou, or household registration, to 13 million unregistered citizens.
The Ministry of Public Security says registration is a fundamental right for all citizens that is endorsed by the constitution and the law.
According to the National Population Census in 2010, there are 13 million unregistered people nationwide, accounting for 1 percent of China's total population.
Without a hukou, a person is denied access to public education, reimbursement for healthcare costs and other welfare benefits.
Parents who were not qualified to have more than one child under the old family planning policy, cannot register their children unless they pay a significant sum of money. More than 60 percent of China's unregistered people are in this category.
Other unregistered people include abandoned children, children born out of wedlock and those whose documents are missing.
The ministry says social instability increases and social inequalities escalate if some people are excluded from the hukou system.
Since 2013, China has issued several documents on hukou reform, signaling a determination to reform the system.
Later in the same year, the government relaxed the decades-old family planning policy for the first time, allowing couples to have a second child if one spouse was an only child.
In October, China introduced an overall two-child policy, reducing the possibility of people remaining unregistered due to a violation of the law.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
China has taken a major move forward in making its basic education fairer for all, as the State Council decided that government spending shall henceforth be the same for each rural student or migrant rural workers' child as their urban counterparts.
Experts estimate that the move will cost central and local governments more than 15 billion yuan, roughly 2 billion U.S. dollars, over the next two years.
China will set a unified benchmark for public funds per student in rural and urban areas starting next year.
All students covered by the compulsory education program will also have their tuition and textbook fees exempted beginning from 2017, while the government will provide regular allowances for those from families suffering financial difficulties.
Currently, students from different parts of China are entitled to varying amounts of education-linked public subsidies, taking into account factors including the cost of living and wage levels. In general terms, higher levels of public funds are channeled to urban areas. A nationwide unified benchmark will put an end to that disparity.
What's more significant in the move is that privately-run schools will receive the same level of funding from the government.
