在腾讯网和中国青年报社会调查中心新近完成的民意调查中，3000多名公众投票表达了自己的新年愿望，其中“物价不要再涨”高居榜首。另外几大愿望是北京奥运成功举办、环境污染得到有效控制、大学生找工作变轻松等。
A drop in headline-hogging inflation figures is the top of the New Year wish list for Chinese, a recent poll shows.
Of the 3,200 people who participated in an online poll to choose their wishes from 21 options, four in five chose "drop in consumer price index (CPI)" as their foremost.
"You may not run faster than Liu Xiang, but your assets have to grow faster than CPI," said a netizen - quoting a slogan by newly-launched Moneyweek magazine - in the "Top New Year Wishes" poll conducted by the popular news portal QQ.com and China Youth Daily.
CPI - a key gauge of inflation - rose to an 11-year high of 6.9 percent in November last year, spurred mainly by increases in food prices.
Despite an 8 percent rise in per capita net income, the highest since 1997, two in three urbanites and nearly three in five rural residents surveyed by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said price hikes were "the social issue of highest concern" last year.
Options given by the poll organizers included broad topics such as food safety and environment protection and hot stories like the launch of the Chang’e I lunar orbiter.
A successful Summer Olympics in Beijing followed the CPI drop as the second most commonly shared wish, with 60 percent choosing the option.
The sentiment was also shared by some people overseas.
In an online poll conducted by the China Daily website, a European netizen named "rockmyword" said: "I wish the best for (the Games) because I love Beijing. I love watching track, gymnastics and swimming events."
"Effective control of pollution and corruption" was also high on the list with two in five people voting for the two options.
Beating other broad issues such as better employment, wishes for higher stock earnings jumped into the top 10 wishes.
The ranking indicates a large number of Chinese have bought stocks during the bull market, said the poll organizer. The Shanghai stock market soared 97 percent last year after more than doubling in value the previous year.
(China Daily)
January 8th, 2008 at 7:00 am
BEIJING: More than anything else, Chinese hope inflation will fall in the new year, state media reported Monday, reflecting growing public concern about rising prices.
Four in five Chinese place a cooling in the consumer price index, or CPI, at the top of their New Year wishes, the China Daily said, citing an online poll carried out by popular news portal QQ.com and the China Youth Daily.
“You may not run faster than (world champion 110 m hurdler) Liu Xiang, but your assets have to grow faster than CPI,” one of the 3,200 respondents in the poll was quoted as saying.
Inflation, which hit an 11-year high of 6.9 percent in November, beat more traditional concerns such as corruption and pollution, according to the paper.
The results of the poll were confirmed by a survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a top think tank, which showed two out of three urban residents thought rising prices were the social issue of highest concern.
Inflation in China has been boosted by rising food prices, and especially a rise in the price of pork, the nation’s favourite meat.
- AFP/ir
January 8th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Rising prices of consumer goods have become the top concern of urban and rural residents, followed by “income gap” and “corruption,” according to a survey by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).
Results of the survey on urban and rural residents’ life satisfaction were published in CASS’s 2008 Blue Paper of Society on Friday.
Director of the Institute of Sociology under CASS, Li Peilin, said that 30.5 percent of the people surveyed chose “rising prices of consumer goods” as the most serious social problem, followed by “income gap” and “corruption.”
Both urban and rural residents feel the pressure from rising prices of consumer goods in 2007, according to home visits conducted in October of 2007 in seven cities, seven small towns and their surrounding rural areas, and eight rural areas in Huangpo district of Wuhan City, capital of central Hubei Province.
“Laid-off and re-employment” and “social security” used to be top concerns in the 1999-2005 period. But “Rising prices of consumer goods”, to which 66.5 percent of urban residents and 57.5 percent of rural residents surveyed expressed concern, jumped to the top of the list this time. “Housing reform” with 24.6 percent and “food and drug safety” with 26.6 percent ranked second on the lists of concerns of urban and rural residents, respectively.
The country’s accumulated Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 4.6 percent in the first 11 months of 2007, to which food price hike contributed more than 80 percent, reported China Finance Information on Friday.
Source:Xinhua