Guangzhou has taken the lead in Guangdong province to scrap a rural hukou, or household registration system, which is preventing farmers from enjoying many rights and advantages enjoyed by their urban peers.

Starting this week, household registration departments under the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau have required local residents to change their residence booklets to identify them as permanent Guangzhou residents, according to a notice on the bureau's official website.

"That indicates all the farmers in the southern metropolis will become urban residents after they have changed their residence booklets in the following months," said the notice.