BEIJING: China’s consumer prices grew at their fastest rate in almost eight years in October driven by a spike in meat prices caused by an outbreak of African swine fever, according to official figures released Saturday.The consumer price index (CPI) — a key gauge of retail inflation — hit 3.8 percent last month, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, up from 3.0 percent in September and the highest annual rate since January 2012.Analysts in a Bloomberg News poll had forecast a rate of 3.4 percent.The spike has led the government to intervene to stabilize prices and guarantee supplies, according to the official Xinhua news agency.“Chinese leaders are terrified of inflation,” Beijing-based research firm Trivium China said in a note, describing price rises as “one of the big drivers behind the 1989 Tiananmen protests.”The inflation rate at the time of the student-led uprising stood at 18.25 percent.Producer prices, meanwhile, saw their steepest decline in two years, sliding for a sixth straight month, hit by the trade war with the United States.The producer price index (PPI) — an important barometer of the industrial sector that measures the cost of goods at the factory gate — contracted 1.6 percent in October from the previous year, the NBS said.That came after prices shrank 1.2 percent in December, and represented the sharpest decline since August 2016.Analysts in a Bloomberg poll had forecast producer prices would shrink 1.5 percent.
