Consumer price index CPI Photo: CFP

China's consumer price index (CPI) was up 0.1 percent year-on-year in December, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday. For all of 2024, the CPI increased by 0.2 percent, showing moderate growth in consumer price levels, NBS data showed.

The CPI number, a main gauge of inflation, showed that the consumer market operated steadily in December, with the index remaining flat month-on-month, but slightly down from the 0.2-percent growth seen in November, according to the NBS.

The core CPI, deducting food and energy prices, rose by 0.4 percent year-on-year in December, an acceleration of 0.1 percentage point compared with November, the NBS said.

Food prices fell 0.5 percent year-on-year in December, with the prices of pork, a staple meat in China, and fresh vegetables gaining 12.5 percent and 0.5 percent year-on-year. 

Non-food prices rose 0.2 percent year-on-year last month. Gold jewelry prices soared by 27.2 percent, and the prices of fossil fuel-powered cars and new-energy vehicles declined by 4.7 percent and 6 percent, respectively. Services sector prices were up by 0.5 percent in December compared with a year earlier, said the NBS.

Yang Delong, chief economist at Shenzhen-based First Seafront Fund, told the Global Times on Thursday that while the growth in consumer prices remained "moderate" in 2024, the CPI reading also showed that domestic demand still was insufficient. "Chinese policymakers have launched multiple policies to shore up domestic demand, which will lead to stable growth in consumer prices in the future," Yang added. 

He Xiaoying, an official at the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planner, said that China will implement more proactive fiscal policies and moderately loose monetary policies in 2025, with a particular emphasis on boosting consumption and comprehensively expanding domestic demand. As such, the overall price level this year is expected to continue to return to a reasonable range, according to a report by China Central Television on Thursday. 

The NBS also revealed that China's producer price index (PPI), which measures production costs at the factory gate, went down by 2.3 percent year-on-year in December.

The price decline in December, which the NBS attributed to factors such as industries entering the traditional off-season for production, as well as the transmission of price fluctuations on the international market, showed a sign of improvement as the index narrowed by 0.2 percentage points from November. 

For the full year of 2024, the PPI declined 2.2 percent year-on-year, as against the 3-percent drop in 2023.