China's consumer prices up 2% in August

BEIJING - China's consumer price index (CPI), the main gauge of inflation, climbed to 2 percent in August, the highest level seen in 2015, official data showed on Thursday.

The figure was up from market forecast rises of 1.9 percent and 1.6 percent in July.

On a monthly basis, consumer prices in August rose 0.5 percent, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

NBS statistician Yu Qiumei attributed the pick-up to higher prices of food, including vegetables and pork.

Producer price index, which measures wholesale inflation, slid 5.9 percent year on year in August, according to the NBS.

The government aims to keep consumer inflation at around 3 percent for 2015.

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China 2014 GDP growth revised down to 7.3% from Xinhua

China's gross domestic product (GDP) growth for 2014 has been revised downward by 0.1 percentage point to 7.3 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics announced on Monday.

The revised gross domestic product (GDP) for 2014 came in at 63.61 trillion yuan ($10 trillion), down 32.4 billion yuan from the preliminary calculation figure that put the annual rate at 7.4 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement.

Primary industries accounted for 9.2 percent of the GDP structure, unchanged from the preliminary calculation. The secondary sector accounted for 42.7 percent of GDP, up 0.1 percentage points from the preliminary calculation, while the tertiary sector accounted for 48.1 percent, down 0.1 percentage point from the earlier statistics.

NBS calculates each year's GDP three times -- the preliminary calculation, followed by the preliminary verification and then the final verification, which is released several months later.

Last year marked the weakest annual expansion for China in 24 years due to a housing slowdown, softening domestic demand and unsteady exports, and growth further slowed to 7 percent in the first half of 2015 as the country braces for a "new normal" period of slower growth but higher quality.

In an assuring message to the market, China's top economic planner on Monday said the world's second largest economy is stabilizing and turning for the better, citing stabilizing rail freight and a warming property market as proof for the improvement.

Since August, economic indicators such as power use, rail freight, home prices and transactions have all taken a favorable turn, showing economic operations stabilizing amid fluctuations, according to a statement on the website of the National Development and Reform Commission.

A recent report by Fitch Ratings' on China's new normal said that "pessimism over China's short-term outlook is overdone and a growth pick-up in the second half is already in the pipeline."

Fitch, however, also expects more volatility around the new normal of slower growth, both in real economic activity and in financial markets.