China's consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.5% in July from a year earlier, the softest pace of increase in six months following a slowdown in factory-gate prices.
The latest print missed the market consensus forecast of 0.8% tracked by Investing.com and compared with the 1% expansion in June.
On a monthly basis, CPI fell 0.1%, easing from a 0.3% decline in June, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics on Sunday.
Core CPI, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.9% year over year, also marking the weakest pace since January, when the index declined 0.8%.
Food prices fell 1.5% year over year, with pork prices down 13.3%. On a monthly basis, pork prices edged up 4.1%, which NBS Chief Statistician Dong Lijuan attributed to hog production capacity controls and extreme heat and rainfall that pushed transport costs higher.
Elsewhere, artificial intelligence drove prices of electronic products like tablets, computers and mobile phones higher in July versus the previous month, Dong added.
Meanwhile, China's producer price index (PPI) rose 3.5% year over year in July, also marking a deceleration from the 4.1% rise in June. The reading was lower than the consensus forecast of 3.8% tracked by Investing.com.
On a month-over-month basis, the PPI fell 0.7%, sharper than the 0.3% drop the previous month. Dong attributed the drop to a decline in the prices of petroleum product manufacturing and organic chemical raw material production.
The latest data point to a further slowdown in economic activity in China, with manufacturing and services activity losing steam in July, according to the recent RatingDog Purchasing Managers' Index surveys published last week.
Manufacturing activity growth moderated to a four-month low, while services activity expansion also eased to the slowest in 10 months in July.
