An employee works on the assembly line of LED lighting products in China.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
China’s consumer prices fell in October, as the world’s second-largest economy struggled with an uneven post-Covid recovery.
Data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics on Thursday showed October consumer price index shrank 0.2% year-on-year, more than the 0.1% decline expected by economists polled by Reuters.
This comes after China’s CPI was unexpectedly flat in September, highlighting the need for further policy support.
Producer prices declined 2.6%, slightly smaller than an expected decline of 2.7% and has been in negative territory for the 13th straight month. China’s PPI was at 2.5% in September, showing factory deflationary pressures remained.
Beijing has provided targeted policy support even as more and more data suggested that growth remained sluggish. Further hurting consumer confidence was an ongoing debt crisis in two of China’s largest real estate developers.