China's Consumer Market Continues to ImproveThe consumer market in China has continued to improve this year with January's consumer price index (CPI) growing by 0.9 percent from December last year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Friday.Compared with a merely 0.1 percent growth in December last year, the robust rally of consumer prices indicates that China is slowly coming off the shadow of deflation, according to NBS experts. Figures the NBS released Friday shows that in January the CPI grew by one and 0.8 percent in urban and rural areas, respectively, on a monthly basis. The NBS said that though the prices of food normally go up during the holidays of the Chinese Lunar New Year, the CPI saw smaller fluctuations this year. The NBS adopted new indices that cover more goods and services in calculating the CPI in January this year for a more comprehensive CPI that is expected to reflect the change in consumer demand more accurately. The varieties of goods and services selected by the NBS were increased to 550 from the original 325. |
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