A record high 47.6 percent of urban Chinese households said current price levels were excessively high and unacceptable, a survey released by the People's Bank of China (PBOC) on Thursday revealed.

The survey, conducted in mid and late November, covered 20,000 households in 50 cities nationwide, the central bank said.

The figure was up 0.5 percentage points from the third quarter and up 23.2 percentage points from the same period last year.

This indicated that nearly half the urban consumers felt the pinch of rapid price hikes in food items, particularly in meat, eggs and vegetables, the survey stated.

The food price increases had caused China's consumer price index, a major gauge of inflation, to jump to a 11-year high of 6.9 percent in November.

A record 64.8 percent of the households surveyed believed consumer inflation would continue to rise next year. The figure was 3.4 percentage points higher from last quarter.

An increasing number of households said they would deposit more money in the bank while reducing stock holdings after frequent interest hikes and stock market corrections, according to the survey.

Up to 30.2 percent of the households also said they would deposit more money at banks. The figure, 4.9 percentage points higher from last quarter, marked the end of declines in four consecutive quarters.

The survey noted, however, that 35.8 percent of the households thought stock market investment was more attractive. The figure was 8.5 percentage points lower from the record high of the third quarter.

(Xinhua News Agency December 21, 2007)