According to the top economic planner, housing prices in 70 major Chinese cities continued to drop in February.

On Tuesday the statistics bureau said average prices in those urban areas dipped 1.2 percent year-on-year. This is a faster fall than the previous month. In particular, newly-built houses saw their prices drop 1.8 percent. But prices of budget housing rose 0.3 percent. The city that suffered the largest decline was Shenzhen, with a 16 percent price tumble.

In the mean time, second hand housing prices also sank 0.7 percent in February, twice as fast as in January.

(CCTV March 11, 2009)