The current high rate of privately owned housing is a cause for concern, says a signed article in China Youth Daily. An excerpt follows:

According to statistics published by the Ministry of Construction, nearly 82 per cent of housing in urban China is privately owned, the highest rate in the world. However, this high rate is nothing to boast about.

Although the figures show that 82 per cent of housing is privately owned, they shed no light on who actually owns this property.

Before China started its housing reform, most real estate was publicly owned. After the reform, most publicly owned housing has been sold to its residents. Together with newly built commercial housing, the rate of privately owned housing increased massively.

But this does not mean that China has the world's highest rate of owner occupancy.

According to the China Life Report 2006 issued by the China National Conditions Institution and Master Card International, 33 per cent of high-income earners whose annual income exceeds 110,000 yuan (US$13,580) possess two apartments, while 10 per cent of them own three or more apartments. This shows that privately owned housing is very likely to be owned by a limited number of people.

This amount of privately owned housing indicates a crisis, rather than any sort of achievement.

To ensure housing security, the government should possess a certain quantity of real estate in order to provide low-rent accommodation to the urban poor. If the government does not have enough real estate with which to do this, then the central government's promise to give the poor access to low-rent housing cannot be fulfilled.

For example, in Lanzhou, capital of Northwest China's Gansu Province, about 50,000 of the city's poorest residents have no fixed abode. The local government is unable to solve this problem due to the shortage of publicly owned housing.

Therefore, a high rate of privately owned housing is not something to boast about. And misunderstanding the rate will only lead to bigger mistakes in policy-making.