Modern Express, December 8, 2010

Today's Modern Express looks at housing prices for next year:

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) released their "Economic Blue Paper" yesterday. The Blue Paper shows that this year the figure for juxtaposing income and towns and cities across the nation is 8.76, which is 0.46 higher than last year. This is the equivalent of normal families saving up for 8.76 years without eating or drinking, and buying a house. The Blue Paper also made predictions about the trend of real estate prices next year, if regulation relaxes, then prices will rebound, and prices might increase a further 20-25%, maybe even more.

The Blue Paper also states that 85% of families can't buy property right now, and the speed of rising in prices is much faster than the rise in income in rural and urban areas.

The data shows that from January to August, commercial housing has the average price of 5520 yuan per sqm. But for the same period last year it was around 4800 yuan, the rise in price is 15%. Compared to 2008, this is a rise of 25%.

The report also highlighted the highest rise in real estate prices in Nanjing this year was 50%.

The headline for today's paper is a report made by the Modern Express supplement on Nanxin village (南新村) in Zhejiang, which is experiencing heavy pollution from the chemical industry, including illness in children, dead fish and trees drying and dying. News reports about the incident have been reposted on iFeng, Tencent, People's Net, Xinhua Net, but was originally reported in the supplement to the Modern Express, its Seven Weekly (快报柒周刊).