China's burgeoning real estate market now has more than a million agents and 30,000 agencies, Vice Minister of Construction Liu Zhifeng said in Beijing Wednesday.

China has established a fundamental framework for the management of the real estate industry including the qualifications of relators and the rules guiding their practices, Liu said at a meeting of China's Association for Real Property Assessors and Realtors in Beijing.

Since China's state-owned enterprises began to cancel housing benefits to their employees in late 1990s, more and more Chinese have purchased properties.

With a year-on-year housing price increase of 12.5 percent during the first quarter of this year, real estate industry has become a new growth area in China's economic development, as official figures from the National Bureau of Statistics revealed.

"This brisk market demand has brought out the occupation of real estate agents who not only facilitated trade information, enhanced market efficiency but also defended the legitimate interests of parties to a real estate deal," Liu said.

To secure a smooth development of the country's fledging housing industry where market irregularities still exist, the State Council has created guidelines to tighten supervision. Real estate agents' ethics and qualifications will also be further standardized, Liu noted.

(Xinhua News Agency May 12, 2005)