Apartment price will depend on which city you are buying it.  On  first tier cities you wll pay to damn much.  I bought mine on a small city on e South China sea, and paid 4,300 Rmb/sq m.

And that includes the extra charge for being on a 32 floor, facing the sea. And also, apartment was turned over finished already, just furniture to be added.
Now, if you want it on your name ( a foreigner), you must pay for it cash, no financing. To finance it had to be on a Chinese name, with 30 % down payment and 10/20/30 years loan at around 6 % interest. Also, must pay 6 % tax if foreigner of total apartment sale price (if Chinese only 3 %).
As a foreigner, you can own an aprtment in China to live on,.can not rent it. And if you buy one, if sell it in less than 5 years must pay 20 % tax of sales value.

I also bought an apartment in the deep south. Two years ago I got a great deal for 3400 rmb per square metre. It was building #4, 4th floor, apartment #4, so the locals here weren't keen to buy it. Although the building was finished, I had to wait 2 years to begin decoration until the other buildings were completed. At the gala event to hand out the keys I was offered 10,800rmb per metre!!

Prices are going up fast in the south with the bridges to shenzhen and hong kong under construction.

The best deals are to buy off the plan if you can wait for the construction. Smaller, well placed cities look good. I'm considering buying another in Yang Jiang on the south coast. The qing gui connecting it to GZ south is under construction and the apartment prices are around 3-4000 per metre within spitting distance of the beach.

As a foreigner, be prepared to jump through lots of hoops or just put it in your wife's name. The hoop jumping was tedious to say the least. I depends upon your situations.

My advice: head south, to the western side of the pearl river, for nice a environment and reasonable prices.

I bought an apartment with my wife in Shanxi province. It was about 3500 RMB/sqm, and we had to decorate and furnish it ourselves. The hardest part was making sure we got quality items at a fair price (my wife is good with that), because most places try to rip off new home buyers (especially for interior decoration). 

Having to hang around and make sure the workers did a good job was also quite a task. On the contrary, you can buy an apartment fully decorated already but they usually do a very poor job as they decorate hundreds of apartments the same and really don't seem to care. 

My wife's cousin took this route and our apartment was MUCH better than hers because we made certain it came out nicely. So before this and lots of paperwork to go through... if you want your name on the ownership papers and the mortgage (naturally as one would)... you may need a Chinese name... some banks can't take your legal name and then some kind of document that links your Chinese name to a legal document... like your passport number or something.  

HappyExPat is correct, need to co-sign with a Chinese spouse or something. 30% depost and all those other details. 

I suggest always buying an apartment with the possible intent to sell in 10 years. This means the quality of schools within a five minute drive, transportation hubs, access to downtown or industrial areas, reputation and scale of the real estate company etc.