Chinese voice concerns before parliamentary meeting
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Housing price
"Housing" is the top concern in the survey hosted by xinhuanet.com and has attracted a huge amount of comments online.
Traditionally in China, an apartment of one's own is a must-have for marriage, although the government has tried to encourage young people to rent rooms before they buy one.
As housing prices in large Chinese cities have kept soaring over the past years, the government has been working on plans to increase public rental housing and build more government subsidized affordable houses.
But a report from the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the top legislature, said construction of low-income houses was behind target, with only about 23 percent of investment realized by the end of last August.
According to the Beijing Municipal Statistics Bureau, the city's average annual income in 2008 was 44,715 yuan, while urban apartments were selling for an average 15,581 yuan per square meter.
An apartment of 80 square meters costs almost 1.25 million yuan, which would require a family of two wage-earners to repay with half their salaries for 30 years.
The past year saw a 24 percent increase in housing prices nationwide, according to a report from the real estate association of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce earlier this month.
"Hi, Premier Wen, we hope you can help us. Houses are for the rich but not for ordinary people like us. Even in my hometown, a small city as Shandong's Zibo, houses are too expensive for us. We hope the central government can address this problem," a post said at xinhuanet.com.
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