(CNN) -- China's plan to guarantee its economic future depends on empowering and enriching the most downtrodden of its citizens: migrant workers. These are the approximately 250 million people from the countryside that now live and work in Chinese cities but they cannot access government healthcare, education and other social services once they leave their home villages and towns. These migrants are handcuffed by the Soviet-inspired "hukou" system of housing registration. Introduced in the 1950s, it aimed to prevent farmers and peasants from flooding into the cities and during the Mao years such a move was nearly impossible. Since reforms began in 1980, however, the government has allowed farmers to migrate to the cities to fill jobs at factories, construction sites, restaurants, hotels, shopping centers and the like.
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China's economic future depends on empowering migrant workers
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The current investment-based economic model is running out of gas
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Making migrants legal urban residents will create a new wave of consumers
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However, sustainable urban development will be huge challenge
They alone can't drive the level of consumption the @placeholder economy will require going forward.