A statistical working conference on the property prices in 10 Chinese cities, including Beijing, Tianjin and Shenyang, will be held in Beijing Friday afternoon, said Ma Jiantang, chief of the National Bureau of Statistics, on the sidelines of a national congress.

Attendees to the meeting, which will focus on how to improve data collecting in the property industry, included real estate developers as well as members from industry guilds, Ma said.

The bureau chief added that he had just returned from a similar working conference in south China's booming metropolis Shenzhen.

The bureau's method of collecting data on property markets should be upgraded from current linear reports by real estate developers to a two-way channel combined with statisticians' examination of the markets.

In addition to this, the bureau should change its statistics release system since the generalized annual report in its current form smoothes over and covers up the monthly or quarterly market fluctuations, which seriously lessens its informative value, Ma said.

Public uneasiness over the country's skyrocketing real estate prices is an ongoing topic in the media, and the statistics bureau has repeatedly tried to clarify that property price hikes, as an international standard, would be separately calculated and thus not included in the closely watched consumer price index.