Price hike of seven major categories drives China's CPI in March: analyst

Seven of the eight major categories of commodities and services that make up China's consumer price index (CPI) have risen in March, said an analyst after the country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released the latest data on Friday.

The latest data showed China's CPI, a main gauge of inflation, rose 1 percent year on year in March, and the core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, increased 1.1 percent year on year.

Among them, prices of industrial consumer goods grew by 2.2 percent, an increase of 1.1 percentage points from the previous month, contributing about 0.67 percentage points to the year-on-year CPI increase.

Specifically, the prices of gold jewelry, household appliances and clothing all went up, while gasoline prices turned from a decline to a rise.

"Of the eight major categories of commodities and services that make up the CPI, seven recorded price increases and one saw a decline, namely the residential category. Specifically, driven by strong seasonal demand, a rise in clothing prices pushed up the overall price of the apparel category year on year. The price of the transportation and communication category shifted from a decline to a year-on-year increase. Meanwhile, boosted by growing resident travel demand, prices for travel agency services also rose year on year," said He Xiaoying, deputy director at the analysis and forecasting division of the price monitoring center under the National Development and Reform Commission.

Friday's data also showed that the producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, returned to year-on-year growth in March, ending a 41-month streak of decline.

The PPI rose 0.5 percent year on year in March, reversing a 0.9 percent drop in February, according to the NBS.

NBS statistician Dong Lijuan attributed the turnaround mainly to imported inflationary pressures and improved supply-demand dynamics in some domestic industries.

Peng Xiaozhen, an analyst at Sublime China Information Company Limited, an institute specializing in providing information on Chinese commodity market, said overall, China's PPI is set to recover.

"International energy markets experienced wide fluctuations, and rising costs pushed up prices across the entire petrochemical industrial chain. Boosted by higher energy and chemical product prices, the rebound trend of China's PPI was further consolidated and overall, its recovery is going to continue," said Peng.

Price hike of seven major categories drives China's CPI in March: analyst

Space-bred cranberry seedlings, carried into space aboard multiple missions and nurtured through two years of greenhouse breeding and acclimatization, have begun field transplantation at a plantation in northeast China.

The seedlings were carried into space aboard China's Shenzhou-14, Shenzhou-16 and Shijian-19 missions. After returning to Earth, they underwent a rigorous two-year period of greenhouse breeding and acclimatization before being transferred to open fields for large-scale management and monitoring. Now, they are being planted in fields in Fuyuan, Heilongjiang Province.

Cheng Zhengxin, a technical engineer at the plantation, explained the meticulous transplantation procedures needed to safeguard the delicate seedlings' superior traits and maximize their survival rates in the open fields.

"Now is the ideal season for transplantation. We are moving the space-bred cranberry seedlings from greenhouses into open fields for large-scale management. During the process, we must keep the original roots and soil intact without damaging the root systems or branches. After transplantation, timely watering is needed to keep the soil moist but without water accumulation," she said.

Regarding the future direction of the breeding program, the plantation's general manager Li Feng explained the vision for domestic cultivation.

"The seedlings we are working with come from our space breeding program and radiation simulation experiments conducted with the Harbin Institute of Technology. In the future, we will continue field observation and variety comparison experiments to cultivate cranberry varieties suitable for growing in China and help fill the gap in domestic cranberry germplasm resources," he said.

Cranberries used to be sourced mainly from North America, but Fuyuan City has made breakthroughs since 2014 in the production of cranberries via cooperation among the government, companies, research institutions and colleges. Once deserted experimental fields in the city have been transformed into the biggest planting base for cranberries in China. Recent years saw Fuyuan further extending the industrial chain of cranberries to enrich the product line ranging from juice and ice cream to beer and cosmetics, which now serves as a major cash cow to the local economy.

Space-bred cranberry seedlings transplanted into fields in northeast China