China will continue its efforts in curbing the speculative demand and limit the investment-aimed demand in its real estate sector so as to fetch the country a healthier housing market.

All localities must unify their thoughts and acts to the control and readjustment policies released by the State Council on the country's property market and jointly work to realize the stabilization of housing prices and healthy development of the property sector, said Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan.

"And normal housing consumption need of residents should be guided and encouraged in a reasonable way," he said.

The pace of the ongoing retooling process of China's property structure should be accelerated in order to increase the proportion of houses with middle or small sizes and prices, he said.

The amount of affordable and low-rent houses should be improved too.

Local government, he said, must work out and improve a series of measures to guide the construction and sale of affordable houses and hence make low-income groups the real beneficiaries of the policies as supposed in the end.

Information and transparency work for this sector must be strengthened and finally serve to guide the country's property market developing in a rational way.

However, Zeng said, the real estate sector should always and unswervingly be taken as one of China's pillar industries and efforts to that effect be made to push the sector grow in a continuous and healthy manner, he said.

A report released by the National Development and Reform Commission on Friday says property price in July rose 6.4 percent year-on-year, while the urban housing price in the second quarter rose eight percent. Although the average housing price in 70 big cities showed the sign of slower growth, but the prices in Beijing and Shanghai still remain high.

(Xinhua News Agency August 14, 2005)