China’s Inflation Divergence Shows Unbalanced Economic Recovery

China’s producer prices gained for the first time in a year in January while core consumer prices posted the first decline in a more than a decade, highlighting the economy’s unbalanced recovery.

Rising commodity costs drove up producer price inflation to 0.3% last month, matching forecasts, the first gain in the index since January 2020, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed Wednesday. The consumer price index fell 0.3% last month from a year earlier, with the core measure, which strips out volatile food and energy costs, declining by the same magnitude.