"In my own view, drastic rise in stock rates and falling housing prices mean socialism for us commoners," said a netizen in a BBS on the website of Xinhua News Agency, while referring to the imminent sessions of China's top advisory body and legislature.
The view echoed partially the outcome of an on-line survey done on www.xinhuanet.com concerning the topics assumed to spark heated discussions in the Third Session of the Tenth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CCPPC) and the Tenth National People's Congress (NPC) slated to convene Thursday afternoon and Saturday respectively.
Three quarters of the nearly 200,000 respondents as of Thursday morning sorted out China's chronically slack stock market as their top concern among the 20 listed choices, three times more than the second popular choice, putting an end to corruption, which drew 47, 782 votes.
An emergency system to be built in response to public health crisis, raise in income for rural residents and eradication of unreasonable education charges ranked the third to the fifth.
The rich-poor gap and the draft of anti-secession law came next, alluring 32,259 and 24,615 votes.
The sample survey was open to votes from February 7 to March 5.
While China was geared up for the annual CPPCC and NPC sessions, its media began releasing their findings on the top concerns of the general public to be discussed in sessions, usually the most important political event of the year.
More than 10,000 netizens voted for a poll posted on www. peoplesdaily.com.cn from Jan. 26 to February 28, mounting a similar attempt as that of the Xinhua survey. Analogical probes were also conducted by the Nanfang Daily, published in Guangzhou, the capital city of southern Guangdong Province.
The outcome of such probes differs slightly, and the topics of social justice, combating corruption, Medicare system, a clean and effective government as well as stock, real estate and car prices usually constitute shared concerns of Chinese netizens as a whole.
And as a matter of fact, many disadvantaged and rural residents still do not have Internet access, and this may somewhat affect the findings of these polls, mostly carried out on-line, said an analyst at Xinhuanet.