【10.06.11 纽约时报】China Inflation Rises to a 19-Month High

青蛙王子

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/business/global/12yuan.html?ref=china

Fresh data from China on Friday further cemented the view that the country’s giant economy continued to power ahead in May — though a marked rise in inflation also raised the pressure on Beijing to step up efforts to damp the booming pace of growth.
Friday’s figures, part of a monthly flood of statistics from Beijing, showed consumer prices rose at their fastest rate in 19 months, at a pace of 3.1 percent from a year earlier. Across China, workers are beginning to strike for higher wages, which could cause inflation to rise further.
Industrial production and retail sales also powered along forcefully, figures showed Friday, while data out on Thursday revealed imports and exports both topped analyst expectations by a wide margin. Property prices continued to soar in May.
The strong economic data come despite debt concerns and fiscal austerity measures across Europe, China’s biggest trading partner.
Combined, the figures on Thursday and Friday raised speculation among analysts that the Chinese authorities will have to intensify their efforts to tame the pace of growth — and the unwanted side-effect of inflation.
Tools at China’s disposal include a gradual rise in interest rates and an appreciation for the renminbi, which has been effectively tied to the U.S. dollar since late 2008, at what many observes say is an artificially weak level to help Chinese exporters compete internationally.
The timing of any such policy moves remains unclear, and the Chinese statistics office on Friday stressed that it believed inflation would wane again after its rise above the 3 percent mark in May.
Economists at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group said in a note to investors Friday that recent strikes “suggest that wage hikes will spread across industrial sectors, placing pressures on firms to raise prices on their final products” and that “inflation is far from its peak.”
It is time for the Chinese central bank “to switch its policy priority from controlling credit to raising interest rates in order to counter the risk of run-away inflation,” the bank said in its note.
The currency issue has caused considerable tensions with Washington, and on Thursday, the U.S. Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, said that a change of China’s exchange rate policy was “critically important” to the U.S. and global economies.
Chinese authorities may decide to allow the renminbi to fluctuate against the dollar in a tight trading band — rather than announce a one-off, revaluation against the U.S. currency, many observers believe.
Economists remain divided as to when China might move on interest rates, though many project a small increase in the course of the next few months.
A rise in the key lending rates could help damp soaring property prices, which have been a major thorn the side for Beijing amid concerns that a bubble is building, and that many ordinary citizens are being crowded out of the market.
So far, Beijing has avoided outright rate increases, preferring instead to instruct state-owned banks to scale back their lending — a milder tool that also has the effect of suppressing growth.
The global stock markets, meanwhile, have been heartened by the signs of China’s economic resilience.
On Thursday, Wall Street rallied nearly 3 percent, in part because of the unexpectedly strong export data.
The markets in Asia followed suit on Friday. The Nikkei 225 index in Japan jumped 2 percent by lunchtime.
The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong, the Taiex in Taiwan and the S&P/ASX 200 were all up about 1.3 percent by late morning. The Straits Times in Singapore rose 0.4 percent. And the Shanghai composite, the main index for mainland China, gained 0.3 percent.