"Real estate enterprises in Beijing are healthy as a whole," said Zhang Junyao, vice-chairman of the Beijing Real Estate Association. "They have made great contributions to the capital's economic development in recent years."

"Real estate has become one of Beijing's pillar industries and will continue to grow together with our country's economy,

"The municipal government has adopted measures to standardize the real estate market and some of them are quite successful," he said.

Zhang admitted that the efforts to stabilize housing prices in Beijing have achieved little success, but "vigorous demand for houses in major cities is the most essential factor behind the rising prices," Zhang said.

According to statistics jointly released by the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Bureau of Statistics, the average price of new houses in 70 major cities in October increased by 6.6 per cent over the same period in 2005.

In October, Beijing's average housing price increased by 10.7 per cent over the same period last year, the fastest growth rate in the country, followed by Xiamen (10.5 per cent) and Shenzhen (9.9 per cent).

Since the beginning of this year, the Beijing municipal government has adopted a series of measures to cool down the market.

"I believe the future trend is that the government will make policies to help large enterprises grow while small enterprises with inadequate assets and quality will gradually be ousted," Zhang said. "The real estate market will become more and more standardized."

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