China plans to build more affordable housing

BEIJING -- China will continue to build millions of affordable housing units and stick to current control measures on its property sector in 2014, a senior official said on Tuesday.

The country plans to start construction of more than 6 million affordable housing units and complete the construction of 4.8 million units next year, Jiang Weixin, minister of housing and urban-rural development, said at a national work conference.

The country built 4.7 million affordable housing and started construction of 6.3 million units in 2013, according to the ministry's statistics.

Jiang said the country will increase the supplies of land and affordable housing next year and ensure the better implementation of current policies to contain soaring housing prices in some major cities.

Jiang's statement came after the latest official data showed the price of homes in large Chinese cities continued to rise in November, despite fresh cooling measures in more than a dozen cities in recent months.

Compared with November 2012, all but one of 70 major cities monitored by the government reported gains in new home prices last month. Twenty-six cities posted an annual increase of 10 percent or higher, with only prices in Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province failing to rise.

To check soaring home prices, cities including Beijing, Shenzhen, Nanjing and Shanghai has announced a series of measures, including higher minimum down payments for second-home buyers, tightened scrutiny of non-local buyers and more land supplies.