China will relax residency curbs in many of its smaller cities this year and increase infrastructure spending, the state planner said Monday, in a fresh push to boost the urban population and revive slowing economic growth.
The National Development and Reform Commission said it aims to increase China's urbanization rate by at least 1 percentage point by the end of this year.
The latest push is part of its longer-term goal of bringing 100 million people into the cities over the five years to 2020. In 2018, 59.6 percent of China's population lived in urban areas.