Firm stance on house prices

Local developers and government measures should enable affordable housing instead of re-inflating the bubble

Beijing, Shanghai and other big cities have witnessed robust rebounds in house sales despite Premier Wen Jiabao's harsher-than-ever remarks that China's house prices are still far from a reasonable level.

In the first 10 days of March, the sales area of newly built commercial houses in Shanghai reached 417,000 square meters, an increase of 165.6 percent on the same period in February. There was also an increase in the sales of secondhand homes. The increased house sales have reminded many of the "little spring" that the country's housing market experienced in March 2009, which kicked off a two-year-long rise in house prices against the backdrop of the global economic slowdown.