China has pledged to help 100 million migrants gain urban household registration, or hukou, as part of an urbanization drive to have 45 percent of its registered population living in cities by 2020.
They say they have no hope of stepping onto the city's housing ladder and it is getting more difficult to earn a decent wage.
The authorities are working to eradicate duplication of official documents after two well-publicized cases highlighted a rising problem, report Cao Yin in Beijing and Qi Xin in Zhengzhou, Henan province.
Beijing has issued a draft regulation to allow migrants to claim permanent resident permits or "hukou" based on a points system, local authorities said Thursday.
China will provide unregistered citizens with household registration permits, a crucial document entitling them to social welfare, according to a high-level reform meeting.
Xu Shuping, a migrant worker in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, says he longer minds being called a "farmer," as China's drive toward better social welfare for new urbanites like him picks up pace.
China's police have found 271,000 fake or duplicate ID records in the first half of this year, all of which have been nullified, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said on Saturday.
Li Xue, 21, a native Beijinger, has been struggling for 16 years for her household registration. The "black kid" lives in the capital like "a shadow with no status."
China's spectacular economic growth has been accompanied by social contradictions as a result of the development of industrialization and urbanization, said Chinese economists in Hong Kong on June 3.