As China's housing problem continues to hound government officials, the number of people living in the basements of apartment complexes in Beijing continues to rise.

As of the last estimate, about one million people in Beijing are living in 17,000 rented basement spaces, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development shows.

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And that's just for basement spaces that are registered by the government. Several basements in Beijing are occupied by people even without permission of the authorities.

In 2010, the Beijing government started to go after basement owners who rent out their spaces for use as residences.

The crackdown, however, failed to curb the widespread practice.

"It is just impossible to stamp out the use of basements as residences," Chen Po, who runs a business that rents out basements.

Po said people will have not other option when they come to Beijing because of the city's high housing prices and rent.

"As long as you maintain good management and tenants behave well, without disputes with local residents local law enforcement personnel will leave you alone," Chen Po said bluntly.

One of the examples cited by housing analysts is the Xinjingjiayuan community in downtown Xinshijie commercial district.

The apartment complexes in the area have two levels of basement - each partitioned into 600 residential spaces currently occupied by hundreds of tenants.

The city government has removed a total of 120,900 basement tenants from May 2011 to date but this has not stopped the proliferation of basement rentals for residential use.

Meanwhile, China's National Bureau of Statistics said prices of new homes in 288 Chinese cities fell by 0.06 percent in February, marking the 11^th consecutive home prices drop on a monthly basis.

The drop was slower than the 0.1 percent decline registered in January and the 1.62 percent fall during the same month of last year.

The slower pace of decline was taken by analysts as sign that China's property market is continuing to stabilize. 

China's Real Estate Information Corporation said the monthly drop of the index has been narrowing since October, which means property prices have already entered a relatively reasonable level.

China's property industry accounts for about 15 percent of the country's GDP.

TagsChina housing, China Basement Rentals, China Basement Residences