Inflation blues for locals

MORE than 40 percent of Shanghai residents are unsatisfied with their lives as they are having to spent more and more on everyday necessities, a survey has found. Unrelenting price hikes for basics - meaning less cash for leisure - are leaving city residents fed-up, Shanghai Statistics Bureau said yesterday. The survey also found almost 90 percent of local residents are planning to spend more on food and other living expenses, anticipating no let up in inflation. The findings were compiled from questionnaires completed online by 1,062 Shanghai residents, reflecting a span of age and income groups. Some 42.4 percent of respondents said they are "unsatisfied" with their current lives while 37.6 percent described their lives as "just so so." Bureau experts concluded that a disappointing income status and cost of living pressures are the main reasons for dissatisfaction. The survey found that most who reported their lives as unsatisfactory come from low to moderate income families. "These families failed to see their incomes improve in the past two years due to the influence of the global financial recession," analysts said in their report. "At the same time, successive domestic CPI rises have increased their daily expenditure. For such families, their actual income level has dropped." Unable to improve their economic standing, many of these people are unhappy with their lot, said the bureau. "This finding merits key attention from the government," analysts said, suggesting more needs to be done to relieve intensifying living cost pressures. The survey also showed 87.1 percent of locals are expecting to spend a bigger proportion of their budget on necessities this year. Some 80.8 percent predicted that life would continue to become more expensive - especially the cost of food. From a choice of eight major daily spending items, 88.9 percent said they would expect a greater outlay on food. Clothing budget ranked the second, followed by health care, according to the survey. Food prices were up 11 percent in Feb! ruary in China. While almost 13 percent of those surveyed said they didn't plan to raise daily spending, the reason provided by most was that they simply couldn't afford to.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

40,000 hairy crabs released in Yangtze

Image
THE city government yesterday freed 40,000 hairy crabs into the mouth of Yangtze River near the Qingcaosha Reservoir, the first step in a five-year campaign to repair the ecosystem to improve the water quality in the reservoir that provides tap water for millions of residents. The hairy crabs will help establish a complete food chain in the river to help more fish and other aquatic animals survive in the river, Zhuang Ping, deputy director of the East China Sea Fisheries Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, told Shanghai Daily yesterday. The released crabs, about half female and half male, will eat plankton while some of their offspring will become food for meat-eating fish higher in the food chain, said Zhuang, who is leading the water-improvement program. "The better ecosystem the water has, the better its water quality will be," he said. With a capacity of 438 million cubic meters, the reservoir is providing tap water to about 10 million
Keep reading

Shanghai port consolidates its position as world's busiest

Image
SHANGHAI, the world's busiest container port, will consolidate its title this year and leverage its record throughput to become a multi-faceted provider of port services. The city, which overtook Singapore as the world's biggest container handler last year, saw its annual container traffic volume surpass 30 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEU) yesterday. The figure hits an unprecedented level in the world's port history and marks a new leg in Shanghai's voyage to become a global shipping center by 2020. China's remarkable trade boom is reflected in the Shanghai port numbers, which went from 7,951 TEUs in 1978 to 29.05 million TEUs in 2010. The city's customs oversaw a total of US$790 billion worth of imports and exports in the first three quarters of this year - a 19.3 percent year-on-year increase. And its port handled 23.9 million TEUs over the first 10 months, ahead of that of 23.56 million TEUs at Singapore Port. Shanghai International Port (Group) Co,
Keep reading

Praise, scorn for teacher's odd command

Image
A middle school math teacher has stirred controversy after forcing 20 of his students to slap their own faces for three minutes because they made noise in class and scored poorly on exams. Angry local residents are demanding that the teacher resign and asking the school to announce a punishment. But some of the teacher's students, including some who were forced to slap themselves, are calling for leniency. The incident occurred in a class at Donglu Middle School in Pudong on Tuesday when the math teacher surnamed Yang ordered 20 students in his class to slap their faces after he was irritated by them making noise in class. The students said Yang was known as a very strict teacher, so almost all the students obeyed his order and started slapping themselves in the face for about three minutes. Those who slapped too lightly were told by the teacher to slap harder, students told the Oriental Morning Post. Yang's behavior has sparked anger among local residents, especially so
Keep reading