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.

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