Urban Chinese find consumer prices too high

BEIJING - Almost 60 percent of urban Chinese people found prices of consumer goods in the third quarter as "high and unacceptable," a central bank survey said on Wednesday.

At 59.7 percent, it was up 0.6 percentage point from the previous quarter.

About 48 percent forecast that consumer prices in the fourth quarter will be stable or decrease, with 41.7 percent predicting rises and 10.3 percent saying "it is hard to say."

The People's Bank of China surveyed 20,000 urbanites in 50 cities.

About 85.4 percent of respondents believed their incomes "rose" or stayed "basically stable" in the third quarter. The figure was almost the same as the previous quarter, but down 0.4 percentage point year on year.

About 67.6 percent complained that property prices were "high and unacceptable," up 0.9 percentage point from the previous quarter. The survey showed 30.3 percent believed property prices were "acceptable" and 2.1 percent said they were "satisfactory."

China's consumer price index rose 2.6 percent year on year in August, down from 2.7 percent in July. Consumer inflation has remained between 2 percent and 3.2 percent this year, comfortably below the government's full-year ceiling target of 3.5 percent.

House prices continued to rise in most Chinese cities last month. Of a statistical pool of 70 major cities, 66 saw a month-on-month rise in new home prices, up from 62 in July, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday.