China's Inflation Cools to 0.7% as Factory Prices Run Hotter

China's consumer price index climbed 0.7% year-over-year in October, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a report Monday. That's a slowdown from the 0.9% annual pace logged in September, and it still managed to nudge past analysts' estimates. Month-over-month, consumer prices didn't budge at all, flat after a 0.2% gain the month before.

The producer price index told a different story. Factory-gate prices rose 5.7% compared to a year earlier, accelerating from 5% in September. That keeps the wholesale measure on an upward tear, and it also beat expectations.

So the two headline gauges are pulling apart: consumer inflation is cooling while producer inflation heats up. October's CPI reading marks the softer of the two annual figures, with prices unchanged from September to October. The PPI, by contrast, is running at a multi-month high pace in the NBS data.

Both numbers landed with the National Bureau of Statistics' Monday release, and each came in a touch better than the analyst consensus. That's the full picture from October's print — consumer prices decelerating, factory prices accelerating.