AKIPRESS.COM - China has announced plans to expand its cities and improve public services to support economic growth by allowing millions more rural residents to migrate to urban jobs, Miami Herald reported today.

The ruling Communist Party sees allowing people to migrate into cities for higher-paid jobs as a pillar of more sustainable growth based on domestic consumption instead of trade and investment.

The ruling party has promised in its latest five-year development blueprint to make the economy more productive by giving entrepreneurs and market forces a bigger role and overhauling banking and other industries.

The urbanization plan says railways will reach cities with more than 200,000 residents by 2020 and those with more than 500,000 people will be linked by high-speed rail.

Longer-term, authorities expect 300 million people from the countryside to become city dwellers by 2030.

A study by Tsinghua University in Beijing found only 27.6% of China's people have urban status with full claims to education, health and other public services, while hundreds of millions of city dwellers with rural status have limited benefits.