China’s consumer inflation ticks up on rising energy prices
China’s consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 0.9 percent year on year in September on higher energy and industrial consumer goods prices, official data showed on Wednesday.
Every month, the CPI increased 0.2 percent, with the growth rate narrowing by 0.2 percentage points from the previous month, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
In the first nine months of 2026, consumer prices rose 0.9 percent from a year earlier.
The year-on-year increase in September was mainly driven by higher energy and industrial consumer goods prices, while falling food prices weighed on overall inflation, NBS statistician Dong Lijuan noted.
Gasoline prices surged 16.6 percent year on year, contributing approximately 0.47 percentage points to the overall CPI increase, the data revealed. Prices of industrial consumer goods, excluding energy, rose 1.6 percent year on year, contributing about 0.39 percentage points to the CPI growth.
Service prices increased by 0.8 percent, unchanged from August, contributing around 0.4 percentage points to the CPI increase. Travel-related service prices climbed 2.1 percent, while medical service prices were up by 4 percent.
Food prices, meanwhile, fell 1.7 percent year on year, with the decline widening by 0.3 percentage points from August, dragging down the overall CPI by approximately 0.29 percentage points.
On a month-on-month basis, higher prices of industrial consumer goods and food helped push up the CPI, while seasonal declines in travel-related service prices partly offset the increases, the NBS said.
Reference Link:- https://english.news.cn/20261014/9ee5df4e79f443bcba3bfc3eea8458df/c.html
Zamir Ahmed Awan is the founder and Chair of the Global Silk Route Research Alliance, a think tank in Islamabad. He studied engineering at Shanghai University in the 1980s, and years later he went back to China as Pakistan's science counsellor in Beijing, from 2010 until 2016, working on science and higher education cooperation between the two countries.…
