China's consumer inflation rises to 0.8% as producer prices climb 3.8%

Consumer prices in China rose 0.8% in August 2026 from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on 10 September. Prices were 0.4% higher than in July. Over the first eight months of the year, consumer prices averaged 0.9% above the same period of 2025.

Consumer prices: fuel up, food down

• Food prices fell 1.4% from a year earlier, with pork down 11.8% and fresh vegetables down 2.8%.
• Non-food prices rose 1.2%.
• Energy for transport was 8.3% more expensive than a year earlier.
• Services prices rose 0.8%.
• Core inflation, excluding food and energy, was 1.0%.

Since January 2026 the NBS has compiled the index with 2025 as its base period, a change it estimates had an effect of about 0.06 percentage points.

Producer prices rise fastest in mining

The producer price index for industrial goods rose 3.8% from a year earlier and 0.4% from July. The prices producers paid for their inputs rose faster, by 5.8%.

• Mining and quarrying: up 17.8%
• Raw materials: up 6.7%
• Processing industry: up 3.1%

Among individual industries, prices for coal mining and washing rose 26.6%, nonferrous metal smelting and pressing 20.8%, and oil and gas extraction 10.5%. Factory-gate prices of consumer goods, by contrast, fell 0.5%.

Why it matters beyond China

Rising factory-gate prices in the world's largest exporter feed into the cost of goods sold abroad, at a time when inflation is already high in the US and Europe. China's exports rose 25% from a year earlier in August (report).

For currency traders, Chinese data matters most for the yuan and for the Australian and New Zealand dollars, because China is the largest export market for both countries. See commodity currencies and live AUD/USD prices.