China’s consumer prices rose at their slowest pace in more than a year last month, data showed yesterday, vindicating Beijing’s decision to relax credit restrictions to prevent a painful economic slowdown.
However, industrial output growth also hit its lowest level in more than two years, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, fueling concerns that turmoil in Europe and the US is hurting China’s key exports sector.
The country’s consumer price index, a key gauge of inflation, rose 4.2 percent year-on-year last month, the NBS said in a statement.
Photo: AFP
The rate was well below the 5.5 percent recorded in October, but still slightly above the government’s annual target of 4 percent.
It was the slowest pace since September last year, when inflation stood at 3.6 percent, and below analyst expectations for 4.4 percent.
The producer price index, which measures the cost of goods at the farm and factory gate, rose 2.7 percent year-on-year last month, compared with 5 percent in October, the data showed.
It was the slowest pace since December 2009, when it rose 1.7 percent.
Output from China’s millions of factories and workshops rose 12.4 percent year-on-year last month, compared with 13.2 percent in the previous month — the lowest level since August 2009, when output rose by 12.3 percent.
Analysts expect the weaker-than-forecast data will embolden the government to further open credit valves in the coming months to spur economic activity and avoid a sharp slowdown.
“Inflation is marching south at an aggressive pace, with the producer price inflation virtually collapsing,” IHS Global Insight analyst Alistair Thornton said.
However, Thornton warned that the figure was distorted by a spike in inflation in November last year, meaning it was “too early for China to claim complete victory over inflation.”
JPMorgan economist Jing Ulrich said the government would have “greater leeway to carry out selective policy loosening.”
China last week cut the amount of money banks must hold in reserve for the first time in three years to spur lending and counter the turmoil in Europe and the US that threatens to derail the world’s second-largest economy.
The country’s economy is expected to grow 8.9 percent next year, which would be the slowest pace in more than a decade, a state-run think tank said this week.
That compares with an expected growth rate of 9.2 percent this year and follows the blistering 10.4 percent recorded last year, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said.
Other data released by the NBS yesterday showed fixed asset investment in Chinese urban areas rose 24.5 percent in the first 11 months of the year compared with the same period last year.
The growth rate was slightly slower than the 24.9 percent that was recorded in the first 10 months of the year.
Retail sales rose 17.3 percent year-on-year last year, slightly up from the 17.2 percent in the previous month.
The figures were released ahead of the annual Central Economic Work Conference, a three-day meeting of top leaders to outline economic strategies for the coming 12 months, which state media said would start on Monday.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last