【英语中国】5月中国CPI突破3% 分析师解读不一

Analysts react to China's major economic indicators for May, which showed consumer-price inflation breaching the 3% level for the first time in more than a year and a half.

Slowing growth and rising inflation--which is what the May data shows--is a policy puzzle for the government. Falling growth argues for policy continuity. Rising inflation suggests accelerating the tightening schedule. We think the government will be more focused on risks to the growth outlook than the current, rather mild, inflationary pressures. The extent of the impact of the current sovereign debt crisis in Europe, and the policy controls on the domestic real estate sector, are not yet known. The government will want to see whether the Chinese economy slips up on either of these banana skins, before accelerating the tightening schedule. - Tom Orlik, Stone & McCarthy Research Associates

Inflation remains a risk due to the underlying strong demand. Recent industrial strikes suggest wage hikes will spread across industrial sectors, placing pressures on firms to raise prices on their final products. Therefore, CPI inflation is far from its peak as inflationary pressures continue to mount. We believe that as China is experiencing strong demand pressures, (and) it is time for the People's Bank of China to switch its policy priority from controlling credit to raising interest rates in order to counter the risk of runaway inflation. - Li-Gang Liu, Australia & New Zealand Banking Group

We're actually close to the peak in year-on-year consumer price inflation--it could move a little higher, but not much. CPI is expected to peak in July, but food and fuel prices should start falling in the third quarter so I don't think inflation will be a huge policy problem. This set of data will reinforce the authorities' views that the existing policies are working and that there is no need to take any emergency tightening measures. - Tim Condon, ING

Officials seem confident that price pressures will ease later this year, attributing much of the recent positive trend to base effects, but there are plenty of reasons to think that inflation can keep moving higher--policy is still accommodative, money supply growth has been very strong, real deposit rates are negative, the PBOC's measure of the output gap is at multi-year highs, and wages are increasing sharply in parts of the economy, with inflationary expectations also likely to be building. Beijing would like to delay tightening policy further until it gets a clearer read of the property market and the fallout from euro-area weakness, but this strategy is risky given the potential for further gains in inflation in the near-term. - Brian Jackson, Royal Bank of Canada

May data releases suggest quantitative tightening is starting to take effect, but inflation is still rising. So we expect the quantitative tightening in the forms of reserve ratio hikes and lending curbs to continue till the overheated growth cools down to a normal rate. Despite the uncertainties on exports and a property market correction, there is no need to worry about a double dip because China can rely on continued investment into existing infrastructure projects and resilient consumption to grow about 9% in 2H10 and 2011. - Qu Hongbin, HSBC

The odds of a rate hike remain finally balanced with CPI nearing the 4% rate. But I am still expecting no change in policy owing to the Europe crisis and property measures. The PBOC recognizes that the underlying CPI trend is relatively steady. The National Bureau of Statistics also referred to the importance of base effects for today's result. Local economists are more divided about the outlook and there is talk about 'stagflation'...The right sort of inflation is helpful, if it supports purchasing power or works off bad debt, but the authorities will have to manage expectations carefully, and stable food prices are key to their success. - Ben Simpfendorfer, Royal Bank of Scotland