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House prices 'harming building of harmony'

By Zhao Huanxin (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-01-30 10:45

In addition to housing, income disparity is a thorny problem in the capital city of China, according to the report.

The per capita disposable income of the city's low-earners, which accounted for 20 percent of the city's population, was 8,150 yuan ($1,045) last year through October, an increase of 14.9 percent from a year earlier; while that of the high-earning bracket was 30,964 yuan ($3,970), or more than three times as much.

At least half of 92 Beijing government officials, surveyed by the Beijing Municipal Academy of Social Sciences in November, said they believed the problem of the income gap in Beijing had further worsened last year.

Nearly 62 percent of the local officials said they thought the current disparity was not reasonable, according to Gao Yong, another researcher with the social sciences academy.

"The income gap problem has emerged prominently in each of our recent surveys," Gao said. "This is a problem that must be tackled in the city's social development."

An equally pressing problem that will affect the "harmony" in Beijing is about jobs for college graduates and schooling for children of migrant workers.

Beijing had 678,000 college and university students at the end of 2005, at least 70 per cent of them said they hoped to work and live in Beijing after graduation, the Municipal Bureau of Statistics found in a survey last year.