With red flags festooning the magnificent Tian'anmen Square, the Chinese capital is ready to embrace the annual political season, when thousands of lawmakers, political advisors and journalists from home and overseas will be attending the country's two high-profile events.

The entire nation is watching on as deputies to the National People's Congress (NPC) and members of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) arearriving in the national capital for lawmakers' annual session andthe top advisory body's meeting slated for Saturday and Thursday respectively.

"We fear price hikes more than anything else," said Li Li, a resident in Chaoyang district in the eastern Beijing. "With highercosts for tap water, electricity and food, our family spending washigher by 5,000 yuan (about 600 US dollars) last year compared with 2003."

Beijing's tap water price soared from 2.9 yuan (35 cents) to 3.7 yuan (45 cents) per cubic meter, and the cost for electricity climbed from 0.44 yuan (five cents) to 0.48 yuan (5.8 cents) per kilowatt hour.

"Yes, we got a pay raise too, but that was incomparable to the price hikes," said Li. China's consumer price index rose 3.9 percent in 2004, 2.7 percentage points higher than in the previousyear and the highest in the past eight years since 1997, accordingto the National Bureau of Statistics.

Li Shujun, a laid-off worker in Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province, said he hoped discussions at the meetings wouldfocus more on the unemployment issue. "I haven't had any steady income since the company I worked for declared bankruptcy in 2000," said Li, 45. "My wife now makes only about 300 yuan (36 US dollars) a month selling newspapers."

Meanwhile, the performance of China's burgeoning stock market is the most popular choice among 20 general topics posed in an on-line poll conducted by Xinhua News Agency on its website at www.xinhuanet.com.

Three quarters of the more than 190,000 respondents as of Wednesday sorted out the stock market as one of their eight to 10 choices from the list, three times more than the second most popular choice, fighting corruption, which drew 47,500 votes.

Beijing, as host city of the high-profile political events, hasbeefed up traffic management by restricting trucks and cars from entering the city as of Tuesday. Sedan cars with a pass to the capital will be permitted to stay for only three days instead of 30 days.

Yet the city has also vowed to avoid significant traffic slowdowns during the parliament season. The traffic police bureau has worked out faster routes for deputies to shuttle between theirhotels and the Great Hall of the People where the meetings will beheld.

Police cars equipped with global positioning systems will lead the motorcades to monitor real-time traffic flows and minimize inconvenience for ordinary residents, according to a spokesman with the bureau on Tuesday.

He said a halt of normal traffic flows will occur every 40 seconds instead of every 30 seconds last year, and more scientifictraffic manipulation will reduce an average motorcade ride to 30 minutes from 35 minutes reported in 2004.

The security work has also been tightened in China prior to themajor political events. Last week, Beijing pronounced a ban on allair sports involving paragliders, model airplanes and hot-air balloons between March 1 and 16 to guard against possible terror attacks in the political fortnight.

China's public security authority said it will enforce 24-hour monitoring over chatrooms and forums of major Chinese Internet portals during the parliament fortnight. Any messages submitted byInternet users will go through strict censoring and filtering before they appear on the Internet.

Qin Rui, deputy director of the Public Information and InternetSecurity Supervision Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, said some messages on the Internet are "sent by those with ulterior motives".

He said vicious attacks hurled by hackers or computer viruses would still exist in Chinese cyberspace that involves 94 million Internet population.

Officials said a thorough-going examination was kicked off in the fields of transport, coalmines, public places, communities, construction sites and business districts.

Zhou Yuqiu, head of the Beijing Production Safety Supervision Bureau, said his bureau has got fully prepared for the meetings and will work harder still to uproot any possible threats to production safety.

The bureau's deputy chief Li Jianwei said that security examination has already begun in January covering over 4,000 sites,enterprises and organizations.

Five inspection teams will go to almost every corner in the city hunting for hidden troubles that may be turned into various mishaps or disasters, he said.

Meanwhile, at least 650,000 volunteers wearing red armbands will join the police to patrol lanes, roads and streets throughout Beijing to help tighten security during the meeting period.