CHINA’S provincial capitals have discovered a way to keep apartment sales booming by making it much easier for graduates to get coveted household registration permits, according to a Reuters report.

Authorities in the cities say the main aim is to lure talents to make their labor pools more attractive to companies. But the policies are undermining the authorities’ efforts to control property speculation and are artificially propping up prices, critics in the real estate and securities industries say.

The permits, known as hukou, have been used to control internal migration in China for many years. Without a permit, a resident of a city may not be able to get a whole slew of public services, including education and health care, and would sometimes have to live on the margins of society.

Now, cities such as Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in Southwest China, are reversing the process by handing out hukou to college-degree holders and providing these graduates with cash incentives if they buy an apartment.

For example, any post doctoral degree-holder who takes up hukou in central China’s Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province, will be handed 100,000 yuan (US$15,617) for a first home purchase. For college-degree holders the incentive is 20,000 yuan.

Take 27-year-old graduate Peter Li, who faced barriers to buying in Chengdu last year because he was from the northwestern province of Gansu. In July, the new policy was introduced, and he bought a three-bedroom apartment in the upscale high-tech zone of the city.

“Getting a hukou through the talent policy was a more convenient way to get around the housing curbs,” said Li, who moved to Chengdu, which has 17 million people, to work as a product manager in 2016.

By mid January, just over five months after the change, more than 120,000 people had been able to get a Chengdu hukou through the new policy, said Chengdu’s official Talent Work Leadership office. (SD-Agencies)