China’s urban population grew to over 58.5 percent last year, a 1.2 percent increase that may slow down in the years to come as the nation reveals a rural revitalization plan that hopes to draw greater numbers of urban dwellers back to villages.

The urbanization rate has grown by nearly 6 percent since 2012, with an added 102 million people living in cities, said a Xinhua report citing figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday.

A rising urban population is one of the greatest driving forces to spur domestic consumption, and create a more productive , service-based economy, that will better distribute public resources and improve standards of life, the report quoted NBS deputy commissioner Mao Youfeng as saying.

Nations with urbanization populations between 30-70 percent possess the greatest growth potential, and while China’s flow of resources and labor into cities is bound to continue into the future, the country has also drawn up extensive plans to develop rural areas, and predicts a significant population pouring back into cities, according to the "No.1 Document" published by the State Council and Communist Party of China (CPC) on Sunday.

The blueprint intends to make “agriculture an industry with a bright future, farming a vocation with an appeal and villages a beautiful and serene place to work and live.”

Drafting up a comprehensive array of measures to boost agriculture and rural areas, authorities have pledged to increase the attraction of villages through a spectrum of supportive measures, including financial incentives, talent programs and other preferential policies. The central document pledges to increase incomes in rural areas at “rates that exceed cities.”

The “urban revitalization ” mission could even initiate a new round of a “Down to the Countryside Movement” said Wu Hongyao, deputy director of the Central Leading Group Office for Rural Work at a ministry briefing on Monday. “A one-way flow of people into cities must be changed,” he said.

Although the long trend of urbanization will not be turned around in the short term, there may be reverse migration wave in the future, wrote Han Jun, the director of the Rural Work Group in an article on the official publication Farmers Daily Sunday.