Dai did not specify how much the rentals contributed to the city's per capita urban income of 16,677 yuan ($2,138), earned between January and October last year.

In addition to housing, income disparity is a thorny problem in the capital city of China, according to the report.

The per capita disposable income of the city's low-earners, which accounted for 20 percent of the city's population, was 8,150 yuan ($1,045) last year through October, an increase of 14.9 percent from a year earlier; while that of the high-earning bracket was 30,964 yuan ($3,970), or more than three times as much.

At least half of 92 Beijing government officials, surveyed by the Beijing Municipal Academy of Social Sciences in November, said they believed the problem of the income gap in Beijing had further worsened last year.

Nearly 62 percent of the local officials said they thought the current disparity was not reasonable, according to Gao Yong, another researcher with the social sciences academy.

"The income gap problem has emerged prominently in each of our recent surveys," Gao said. "This is a problem that must be tackled in the city's social development."

An equally pressing problem that will affect the "harmony" in Beijing is about jobs for college graduates and schooling for children of migrant workers.

Beijing had 678,000 college and university students at the end of 2005, at least 70 per cent of them said they hoped to work and live in Beijing after graduation, the Municipal Bureau of Statistics found in a survey last year.

"It is hardly possible for Beijing to create so many jobs for them," Dai said, adding that if they stay in the capital, a large portion of them will join the jobless ranks.

Beijing's registered unemployment rate was 2.11 percent last year, but experts believed the actual jobless rate was far higher, and at least one-third of the jobless were aged below 35, according to Dai.

"The unemployment issue would be further complicated if youngsters with higher education couldn't be employed," Gao said. "This will further add uncertainties to the social harmony and stability."

College and university students aside, Beijing had a 3.6 million migrant population at the end of 2005, or nearly one-fourth of the city's total.

They brought with them 400,000 school-aged children. The figure represented more than one-fourth of the city's total number of elementary and high school students, according to Dai's report.

About 100,000 of the children are attending schools not approved by the government, Dai said.

"The municipal government must guarantee that the children of the migrant workers can get better compulsory education in Beijing, as this is the right of the migrant workers who have contributed so much to (the development of) the capital," Dai said.

Doing a good job in education will lend solid support to the development of the underdeveloped regions, from which the migrant workers come from, he said.

(Source: China Daily January 30, 2007)