China Sees Highest Inflation in More Than Two Years - REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These too will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China is always changing. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is...

11/11/2010

China Sees Highest Inflation in More Than Two Years

Stephanie Ho | Beijing 11 November 2010

An elderly Chinese couple pushes carts load with groceries as they shop at a supermarket in Beijing, China, 11 Nov 2010

Photo: AP

An elderly Chinese couple pushes carts load with groceries as they shop at a supermarket in Beijing, China, 11 Nov 2010

Inflation in China for the month of October rose well above the official target, which is leading to increased pressure on the Chinese government to introduce new tightening measures. Stephanie Ho reports from Beijing.

Official statistics released Thursday show China's inflation rate for October jumped to 4.4 percent, the highest in 25 months.

The highest inflation came in foodstuffs, which saw prices rise more than 10 percent. The official target for overall inflation this year is 3 percent.

Brian Jackson, a financial analyst in Hong Kong with the Royal Bank of Canada, thinks inflation in China has been high, and is still likely to move higher.

"It's been going high for about eight months now, and that is causing a lot of concern for the cost of living for Chinese households," said Jackson. "And I think that is putting a lot of political pressure on p

Read more at VOA

Nov 11, 2010 11:12:42 PM | Current Affairs, Economy

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