SHANGHAI: China has said it will stop publishing its much-watched national property price index, a lighting rod for public anger over soaring housing costs, and replace it with two new property indexes.
The National Bureau of Statistics said it was compiling two new indexes to gauge new and second-hand home sales starting with January figures and was halting the release of its survey of average home prices in 70 major cities.
It said the first data under the new system would be released on Friday.
The announcement followed this week's re-weighting of the consumer price index, which included reducing the emphasis on food prices, a move some analysts said could downplay rising inflation.
"It's like changing the scale of a thermometer, and then telling a patient they no longer need to take medicine for their fever, and the whole family cheers that the illness is cured," Xu Xiaonian, an economics professor at Shanghai's China-Europe International Business School, wrote in his microblog.
The statistics agency said its new housing sales methodology would help consumers and policy makers better understand price changes in their cities.
The new method aimed to better reflect regional differences and would rely on more complete residential data from local authorities and real estate agents instead of survey samples, the statement said.
The national property-price index had been criticised for understating the severity of the country's property bubble by diluting the large rises in big cities with tamer changes in smaller ones.
The index showed property prices rose 6.4 percent on year in December, despite Beijing's measures to clamp down on speculation and rein in prices, including higher down-payment requirements and banning second and third home purchases in some cities.
Independent estimates generally showed even greater increases in property prices.
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