Ran Ping has no plans to apply for a much-coveted hukou in the eastern Chinese city of Jinjiang, even though the local government has made the once tightly controlled household registration permit readily available.

The city hukou offers migrant workers access to social benefits ranging from pensions to subsidised health insurance. But Mr Ran, a resident of the city for more than a decade, still maintains registration in his hometown of Qianjiang, an under-developed district of Chongqing municipality, in the west of the country.

Mr Ran’s reluctance is mirrored by millions of other rural residents who have moved to cities in search of jobs. Their unwillingness to sign up threatens Beijing’s goal of granting 100m rural workers city hukou over a six-year period that ends this December.