Commercial home prices in major Chinese cities continued to stabilize in April, according to an official survey.
The survey by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed home prices in 70 major cities stayed flat or dipped in April compared with the previous month. The prices continued to fall on a yearly basis, but the pace of decline further eased.
New home prices in first-tier cities, namely Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, fell 2.1 percent year on year in April, compared with a decline of 2.8 percent registered in March.
New home prices in these cities remained flat compared to the previous month, while resold home prices increased by 0.2 percent from March, according to the NBS data.
Home prices in other major cities monitored by the NBS also posted narrowed price declines compared with one year earlier.
With the successive implementation of various policies aimed at stabilizing the property market, real estate sales have somewhat stabilized, and market transactions in some cities have shown positive changes, said Fu Linghui, an NBS spokesman, at a press conference in Beijing on Monday.
"From January to April, the sales area of newly built commercial housing decreased by 2.8 percent, with the decline rate narrowing by 0.2 percentage points compared with that from January to March. In 40 key cities, the sales area and revenue of newly built residential properties increased by 0.1 percent and 2 percent, respectively, from January to April year over year," he said.
Generally speaking, home prices have remained stable, according to the official.
"On a month-on-month basis, the prices of new commercial residential properties in first- and second-tier cities among the 70 large and medium-sized cities remained unchanged in April, while those in third-tier cities slightly declined, while the year-on-year decline in the prices of commercial residential properties in all 70 cities continued to narrow. Specifically, the prices of newly built commercial residential properties in first-, second-, and third-tier cities narrowed by 0.7, 0.5, and 0.3 percentage points, respectively, while the prices of resold residential properties narrowed by 0.9, 0.5, and 0.4 percentage points, respectively," Fu elaborated.
China's home prices continue to stabilize in April
The Exhibition Hall of Evidence of Crimes Committed by Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army in northeast China's Harbin released on Thursday a 38-minute video of a former member of Unit 731, a notorious Japanese germ-warfare unit during World War II (WWII).
In the footage, former Unit 731 member Tsuruo Nishijima detailed how the unit used meteorological data to carry out bacterial dispersal and frostbite experiments.
The video was recorded in 1997 by Japanese scholar Fuyuko Nishisato and donated to the exhibition hall in 2019, according to the hall, which was built on the former site of the headquarters of Unit 731 in Harbin, capital city of Heilongjiang Province.
Nishijima joined Unit 731 in October 1938 and served in the unit's meteorological squad. The squad was not a simple observation section but rather an auxiliary force supporting the unit's human experiments in the field by measuring wind direction, wind speed and other conditions to ensure optimal experimental results.
Nishijima confirmed in the footage that "the meteorological squad had to be present at every field experiment." He testified to the "rainfall experiments" conducted by Unit 731, which involved aircraft releasing bacterial agents at extremely low altitudes.
At a field-testing site in Anda City, Heilongjiang, Unit 731 aircraft descended to about 50 meters above the ground and sprayed bacterial culture liquids onto "maruta" -- human test subjects -- who were tied to wooden stakes. Each experiment involved about 30 people, spaced roughly 5 meters apart. After the experiments, the victims were loaded into sealed trucks and transported back to the unit, where their symptoms and disease progression were recorded over a period of several days.
Nishijima also revealed that a Japanese military doctor once died after removing the mask and becoming infected during an experiment, indirectly proving the extreme virulence of the bacterial agents.
The video further disclosed details of the meteorological squad's involvement in frostbite experiments. To study wartime needs in frigid regions, the invading Japanese army forced the victims to expose their bodies for five to ten minutes in temperatures ranging from minus 20 to minus 35 degrees Celsius and observed their physical reactions.
"For example, during frostbite experiments, we would be sent outside to observe the weather. They wouldn't bring many people out at once, only two or three, who would be forced to take off their upper garments or all their clothes. In fact, it was already quite tough to stay out there for five to ten minutes, because it was too cold," Nishijima said.
According to the exhibition hall, Unit 731 had a separate frostbite laboratory, with Hisato Yoshimura serving as the leader of the unit's frostbite study squad from 1938 to 1945.
In a paper on frostbite published in 1941, Yoshimura recorded data from live human experiments to study the occurrence of frostbite and pathological changes in the human body under different conditions.
"This is a form from the paper. Titled 'The Severity and Process of Frostbite,' it divides frostbite into three stages. The symptoms of the first-degree frostbite are redness and swelling. Blisters appear in the second stage. And the third-degree frostbite features necrosis and ulceration. It says here that, in the third stage, from the 50th to the 60th day, toes and fingers detached. There is no doubt that these data were obtained through numerous human experiments," said Tan Tian, a researcher of the exhibition hall.
Nishijima's video, a piece of oral history from a perpetrator's perspective, further reconstructs the criminal chain of Unit 731 and once again demonstrates that the invading Japanese army's biological warfare crime was systematic and inhumane, and was an undeniable historical truth, according to the exhibition hall.
"Unit 731's frostbite experiments were essentially conducted to prevent and treat frostbite during combat in cold environments. However, for the so-called prevention and treatment of frostbite, they caused frostbite on living people for experiments and data analysis. So in nature, it still serves the purpose of war," said Jin Shicheng, director of the Department of Publicity, Education and Exhibition at the hall.
Unit 731 was a top-secret biological and chemical warfare research base established in Harbin as the nerve center for Japanese biological warfare in China and Southeast Asia during WWII.
At least 3,000 people were used for human experiments by Unit 731, and more than 300,000 people in China were killed by Japan's biological weapons.
Video offers new evidence of Japan's wartime germ-warfare crimes in northeast China
