Undoubtedly food price hikes in China have affected everyone's life and students are no exceptions. When they returned to university for the new semester, they, too, found that food prices in canteens had been raised. Along with the increase more diners were coming from outside.

Some students from Peking University are now choosing to dine on campus at their neighboring Tsinghua University because it's currently dishing out cheaper meals. Officials from Tsinghua University told the Beijing Times that there is no regulation available yet to curb outside diners.

Last week, in the wake of recent hikes in food prices, the Ministry of Education ordered all universities to stabilize their canteen meal prices. The cost of keeping the prices down will be borne by the universities and local governments.

The Beijing Municipal Education Commission issued a notice yesterday, asking all canteens of universities, colleges and training schools in the city to keep the price, quality and portion of the meals unchanged, according to today's Beijing Times.

Furthermore, the canteens were also urged to take measures to control the number of diners entering from outside the university. The move is designed to ensure that only registered students would benefit from the state's education support policy. The Commission said that the Ministry of Finance has also allocated special funds to support indigent students.

Shanghai media sources reported a couple of days ago that since the beginning of new semester in September, some university canteens in downtown Shanghai had become "special restaurants" for office workers working nearby because the price of set meals served in other restaurants had been raised by two to ten yuan (US$0.27 to 1.33).

According to a survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics during the 2007 second quarter, about 82 percent of those interviewed in Shanghai, where residents have the highest average income in China, said that prices of daily necessities were too high.

(China.org.cn by Zhang Yunxing, September 11, 2007)