Experts Call for Revisions of China's Rising CPI

BEIJING, Jan. 22 -- Liu Qi, an advertising firm employee in Beijing for eight years, Thursday spent 80 yuan (11.7 U.S. dollars) at a supermarket. About a half went on food and the rest on daily necessities.

However, the biggest financial pressure for the 29-year-old is not food, but her plan to buy an apartment in the city as home prices had risen through the roof.

China's Consumer Price Index (CPI), the main inflation gauge, climbed 1.9 percent year on year in December, mainly boosted by food, rent and related prices, Ma Jiantang, director of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said Thursday.

The CPI in November and December was lifted by rising consumption on the back of faster economic expansion, and food price hikes caused by winter weather, said Xiong Peng, a senior researcher with Shanghai-based Bank of Communications (BOC), China's fifth largest lender, Thursday.

A BOC report out Thursday predicted year-on-year CPI growth might stand between 3 percent and 4 percent in 2010.