Guangzhou (JLC), October 15, 2025--China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, fell 0.3% year on year in September amid stable market performance, slowing down by 0.1 percentage point from the drop in August, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The decline was ascribed to a carryover effect of minus 0.8 percentage points, offsetting a 0.5-point rise from new prices.
Specifically, food prices, down 4.4%, were the main drag and accounted for about 0.83 percentage points of the fall, while energy prices dropped 2.7%, contributing about 0.20 percentage points to the decline.
The core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose by 1.0% year-on-year, marking the fifth consecutive month of expansion in the growth rate and the first time in 19 months that the reading has returned to 1%, signaling a steady recovery in domestic demand.
On a month-on-month comparison, the CPI edged up 0.1% in September, the NBS data indicated.
In the first nine months, the CPI was down 0.1% from a year earlier, the NBS data also showed.
As for China's producer price index (PPI), which measures factory-gate goods prices, it fell by 2.3% year on year. This represented a narrowing of the contraction by 0.6 percentage points from August. On a monthly basis, the PPI held flat for the second consecutive month.
This resulted from the combined effects of a lower statistical base from the same period last year and the continued manifestation of China's macroeconomic policy measures.
In January-September, the PPI dropped by 2.8% from the same months last year.
