Five big Chinese cities rank among the priciest housing markets in the world, surpassing notoriously expensive cities like Tokyo, London and New York, based on calculations by the International Monetary¹ Fund. In fact, seven out of 10 of the world's least affordable² markets--Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Chongqing--are now in China。

根据货币基金组织(IMF)发布的数据显示，五大中国城市在世界最昂贵的房地产市场中名列前茅，甚至超过了众所周知的昂贵城市东京、伦敦和纽约，事实上，世界上十大贵的让人难以承受的房地产市场中，有七个都是中国的城市——北京、上海、深圳、香港、天津、广州和重庆。

Note that that the price-to-wage ratio, which measures median housing prices in a given city against median disposable incomes, reflects affordability³ rather than absolute property value. This means the mid-range price of an apartment in New York is 6.2 times more than what a typical family makes in a year. By comparison, it would take nearly a quarter-century of earnings⁴ to buy a pad in Beijing's capital outright⁵。

房价和工资比是某一城市的平均房价与平均可支配收入的比值，它反映了人们是否能承受这种房价而不仅仅是房产的绝对价值。这也意味着，纽约一间中等价格的公寓是一个普通家庭一年收入的6.2倍多，而要想在北京的中心城区买间房子要花去一个中国家庭近25年的收入。

Residential⁶ property is a big mess for the Chinese government--and it's not going away. Last month, prices on new homes leapt 7.4% in June 2012--the biggest uptick since last December。

居民住宅问题是中国政府面临的一个大问题——而且这个问题还将一直存在。6月，新房价格比去年同期增长了7.4%，这是自去年12月以来出现的最快增长。

In short, policies to curb⁷ housing inflation aren't working. That's worrying news for the government; housing prices are a major source of public resentment⁸. The danger isn't just the threat of popular unrest, though: It's that soaring property prices make people feel less wealthy and less inclined to consume. And that's exactly what the government needs them to do in order to wean the economy off its dependency on exports and credit-driven investment。

简言之，抑制房价的政策没有奏效。这是一个令政府焦虑的消息；房价是引发民众不满的主要原因之一。但危险并不仅仅是民众骚乱的威胁：快速上涨的房价让人们感觉财富减少，也就更不愿意消费。而消费正是政府鼓励民众去做的，这样才能改变中国经济对出口和信贷投资的依赖。

Sure, the announcement over the weekend that the government will stop evaluating party officials solely⁹ on the basis of their contribution to growing GDP. If they're off the hook for hitting targets, it could make them less reliant on land parcel sales--the prices of which have been rising--to fund their budgets。

当然，中国政府周末时已表示，不再将GDP作为衡量地方官员政绩的唯一指标。如果地方官员能够从“唯GDP是从” 中解脱出来，他们便会较少地依赖土地销售来资助预算，而中国的高房价正来源于这种依赖。