The government has adjusted the consumer price index and its national survey of property prices. These two figures have become monthly sources of anxiety to worried consumers.
Now there is a complaint that, in effect, China tweaked the key inflation gauges; analysts said the revisions were necessary and not a bid to mislead the public.
They said the revisions reflect the evolution of the Chinese economy and consumer buying power, and are a step towards improving statistical accuracy in the world’s second-largest economy.
Andy Rothman, a Shanghai-based economist with CLSA, said, “If you’re pursuing the story that there’s something to this adjustment other than a routine adjustment based on changing consumption patterns, I don’t see any evidence to support that.”
The International News (Karachi) reported economists as saying the consumer price revision is in line with “Engel’s Law” of 19th-century economist Ernst Engel, who said that as incomes rise, the proportion spent on food falls.