Commentary
China’s consumer prices are flat, while producers are hit with rising costs, and workers are facing lower wages and a tighter job market.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had hoped that removing COVID-19 restrictions would jump-start the economy. However, after a brief uptick during the first quarter of the year, demand for industrial and consumer products weakened until producer prices began to decline. Last month, producer prices fell at the greatest rate since 2015. For the past nine months, the producer price index (PPI) has been steadily trending downward, and in June it showed a significant drop of 5.4 percent. At the same time, consumer prices are flat and analysts expect them to end the month 0.5 percent lower than last year. …