CHONGQING - A southwest Chinese city on Wednesday piloted a lottery scheme to allocate public rental apartments to eligible families with limited income to protect them from sky-high property prices.

The government of Chongqing Municipality offered 15,281 apartments for the lottery, while 22,317 applicants were qualified to enter the pool, said Zhang Dingyu, director of Chongqing's land resources and housing administration.

Zhang said the units allocated Wednesday account for only 40 percent of the total units the city government plans to provide to the market this year.

Time for the next lottery has not been decided yet.

The authorities drew strict rules to limit candidates' qualification to prevent corruption.

Suspicions over collusion that resulted in the rich getting the government subsidized housing have caused public complaints in cities like Beijing in the past.

According to the rules, unmarried Chongqing residents who earn no more than 2,000 yuan a month, married couples who earn no more than 3,000 yuan, and families in which each member earns no more than 1,500 yuan a month are qualified for joining the lottery scheme.

Wednesday's lottery was conducted in a transparent manner with live television broadcast.

Each unit of the public rental apartments is between 40 to 80 square meters in size.

Tenants enjoy a rent 40 percent less than that of comparable commercial housing.

The term of rental is five years.

Tenants who buy commercial housing will have to give away the units they rent.

Those who won the right to rent the apartment can move in as early as April, officials said.

"I am happy to win the lottery. It is a relief that a senior citizen like me can live in brand new government apartment for such a cheap rent," said Tong Xiaoqiong, 60, who lives alone on a meager retirement salary of 1,380 yuan per month.

Tong, who submitted application to the lottery at the first time, said she had been forced to move four times recently as rent kept surging.

Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifan has said the public rental housing project aims to cover one-third of the city's population.

He said it is the government's responsibility to provide shelter for low-income city dwellers who can not afford to buy an apartment.

China's property market took off in 1998 after the government scrapped off the decades-old policy of free housing for all state enterprise employees, as part of the 'from cradle to grave' welfare under the planned economy.

Housing prices in major cities rose out of control especially in recent years.

Analysts say the number of commercial housing in the market far out-paced that of government-subsidized affordable housing is one of the reasons to blame for the intractable property prices.

The government previously rolled out a series of tightening measures, but property prices remain high since 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis as large amounts of speculative capital stayed in the property market.

The National Bureau of Statistics of China reported last month that under its readjusted calculation system, prices of new properties in the country's 70 major cities continued to rise in January.

Ten of the 70 surveyed cities reported increases of more than 10 percent from a year ago, the National Bureau of Statistics said.

Related readings:  Chongqing to start lottery for public rental housing  Shanghai home sales decline in February  Home price growth slowed in February

Six cities also saw second-hand home prices go up by at least 10 percent.

The average price of housing sold by 30 major real estate companies in China stood at 10,286.42 yuan per square meter in 2010, up 23.98 percent year on year.

In Beijing alone, one square meter in a new apartment sold for an average of 20,000 yuan last year.

But the square meter price for apartments within the Fourth Ring Road, the urban center area, exceeded 34,000 yuan ($5,151), more than 10 times the monthly income of an average Beijing resident.

The central government has announced the largest-ever plan to build 10 million units of low- rental and other types of subsidized apartments in 2011.

Observers say Chongqing's pilot program will be followed by other major Chinese cities as they roll out affordable housing projects to the market this year.