An official from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) interpreted the October 2026 CPI and PPI data: CPI was flat month-on-month and up 0.7% year-on-year, while core CPI rose 0.8% year-on-year. The month-on-month reading reflected diverging price trends across industrial consumer goods, services, and food. The narrowing of the year-on-year increase was mainly due to a larger drop in food prices and smaller increases in prices of certain industrial consumer goods and services. PPI rose 0.7% month-on-month and 5.7% year-on-year. The month-on-month increase narrowed: imported and seasonal factors pushed up prices in energy-related industries, while capacity governance and the development of artificial intelligence drove prices higher in some raw material and equipment manufacturing industries, and prices in consumer goods manufacturing-related industries were broadly stable. The year-on-year increase widened: price gains expanded across multiple industries, including energy and electronic equipment, while the decline narrowed in industries that had exerted a stronger downward pull.