China’s Inflation Problem? It Has None
Falling prices at the factory gate and subdued increases in the costs of consumer goods contrast with searing inflation in many countries
Falling prices at the factory gate and subdued increases in the costs of consumer goods contrast with searing inflation in many countries
SINGAPORE—As Western central banks continue to jack up interest rates in an effort to douse stubbornly high inflation, China faces a growing risk of the opposite problem—deflation.
Prices charged by Chinese factories tumbled in May at their steepest annual pace in seven years, while consumer prices barely budged, fresh signs of the challenges faced by the world’s second-largest economy both at home and abroad.
Economists say the absence of inflationary pressure means China could experience a spell of deflation—a widespread fall in prices—if the economy doesn’t pick up soon.
Persistent deflation tends to throttle growth and can be difficult to escape. While a prolonged period of falling prices probably isn’t in the cards, Chinese policy makers will nonetheless need to do more to stave off that risk and get the economy motoring again, economists say, perhaps by trimming interest rates, weakening the currency or offering cash or other spending inducements to households and businesses.
Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura in Hong Kong, said in a note to clients Friday that he expects local banks to cut key lending rates as soon as next week.
In remarks made at a meeting Wednesday and published by China’s central bank after the release of monthly inflation data Friday, central-bank Gov. Yi Gang said he expects consumer-price inflation to edge up in the second half of the year and exceed 1% in December. He said the People’s Bank of China would use its tools to support the economy and promote employment.
Falling prices in China aren’t necessarily bad news for the global economy, as lower costs to import Chinese goods should help bring down inflation rates that for many economies are still uncomfortably high.
“In a sense, China is already exporting deflation to the world,” said Carlos Casanova, senior Asia economist at Union Bancaire Privée in Hong Kong. That could help ease the pressure on the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks that are battling to bring down inflation, he said.
China’s producer prices—what companies charge at the factory gate—fell 4.6% from a year earlier in May, the weakest reading since early 2016 and the eighth straight month of declines.
Consumer prices rose just 0.2%, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said Friday, slightly higher than the 0.1% annual gain recorded in April but still well below the 3% ceiling for annual inflation set by the government and central bank.
In the U.S., consumer-price inflation in April slowed to a 4.9% annual rate, but that was still more than double the Federal Reserve’s 2% goal. In the 20 nations that use the euro, annual inflation was 6.1% in May.
After soaring last year in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prices of crude oil, food and some other commodities have pulled back, partly leading to China’s subdued inflation.
But also behind China’s predicament, which stands in contrast to the experience of most other economies as they emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic, is a shortfall in spending both domestically and from overseas.
Chinese factories are cutting prices because foreigners aren’t buying their goods with the same gusto as before central banks started ratcheting up borrowing costs. A hoped for consumer spending binge that was supposed to propel growth in China hasn’t materialised. Real estate is in the doldrums, crushing investment.
Western policy makers and economists are exploring whether fat corporate profit margins are stoking inflation in their economies. In China, industrial profits are sinking.
The inflation data adds to a string of disappointing signals on the strength of China’s recovery, which had been expected to power global growth this year after Beijing ditched its draconian Covid controls at the close of 2022.
Chinese exports fell in May from a year earlier, the first annual decline in overseas shipments in three months. Business surveys showed factory activity shrank in May and services-sector activity softened. More than a fifth of young people are unemployed.
Still, most economists think China will meet or exceed the government’s goal of growing the economy by 5% or more this year, given the weak base of comparison with 2022, when sporadic lockdowns in major cities hammered the economy.
Zichun Huang, China economist at Capital Economics, said she doesn’t think China will experience broad deflation and expects consumer price growth to pick up in the coming months thanks to support from policy makers and an improving labor market.
—Grace Zhu in Beijing contributed to this article.
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Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta pour billions into artificial intelligence, undeterred by DeepSeek’s rise
Tech giants projected tens of billions of dollars in increased investment this year and sent a stark message about their plans for AI: We’re just getting started.
The four biggest spenders on the data centers that power artificial-intelligence systems all said in recent days that they would jack up investments further in 2025 after record outlays last year. Microsoft , Google and Meta Platforms have projected combined capital expenditures of at least $215 billion for their current fiscal years, an annual increase of more than 45%.
Amazon.com didn’t provide a full-year estimate but indicated on Thursday that total capex across its businesses is on course to grow to more than $100 billion, and said most of the increase will be for AI.
Their comments in recent quarterly earnings reports showed the AI arms race is still gaining momentum despite investor anxiety over the impact of China’s DeepSeek and whether these big U.S. companies will sufficiently profit from their unprecedented spending spree.
Investors have been especially shaken that DeepSeek replicated much of the capability of leading American AI systems despite spending less money and using fewer and less-powerful chips, according to its Chinese developer. Leaders of the U.S. companies were unbowed , touting advances in their own technology and arguing that lower costs will make AI more affordable and grow the demand for their cloud computing services, which AI needs to operate.
“We think virtually every application that we know of today is going to be reinvented with AI inside of it,” Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy said on Thursday’s earnings call.
Here is a breakdown of each company’s plans:
Amazon said a measure of its capex that includes leased equipment rose to a record of about $26 billion in the final quarter of 2024 , driven by spending in its cloud-computing division on equipment for data centers that host AI applications. Executives projected it would maintain the fourth-quarter spending volume in 2025, meaning an annual total of more than $100 billion by that measure.
The company—which gets most of its revenue from e-commerce and most of its profit from cloud computing—also projected overall sales for the current quarter that missed analysts’ expectations. Its shares slid about 4% in after-hours trading Thursday. The stock rose more than 40% in 2024 and was up nearly 9% this year before its earnings report.
Jassy said AI has the potential to propel historic change and that Amazon wants to be a leader of that progress.
“AI represents for sure the biggest opportunity since cloud and probably the biggest technology shift and opportunity in business since the internet,” Jassy said.
Google shares are down about 7% since its earnings report Tuesday, which showed disappointing growth in its cloud-computing business. Still, parent-company Alphabet said it is accelerating investments in AI data centers as part of a surge in capital expenditures this year to about $75 billion, from $52.5 billion in 2024. The spending will go to infrastructure both for Google’s own use and for cloud-computing clients.
“I think part of the reason we are so excited about the AI opportunity is we know we can drive extraordinary use cases because the cost of actually using it is going to keep coming down,” said CEO Sundar Pichai .
AI is “as big as it comes, and that’s why you’re seeing us invest to meet that moment,” he said.
Microsoft has said it plans to spend $80 billion on AI data centers in the fiscal year ending in June, and that spending would grow further next year , albeit at a slower pace.
Chief Executive Satya Nadella said AI will become much more extensively used , which he said is good news. “As AI becomes more efficient and accessible, we will see exponentially more demand,” Nadella said.
Growth for Microsoft’s cloud-computing business in the latest quarter also disappointed investors, leaving its stock down about 6% since its earnings report last week.
Meta, too, outlined a sizable increase in its investments driven by AI, including $60 billion to $65 billion in planned capital expenditures this year, roughly 70% higher than analysts had projected. Shares in Meta are up about 5% since its earnings report last week.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said investing vast sums will enable it to adjust the technology as AI advances.
“That’s generally an advantage that we’re now going to be able to provide a higher quality of service than others who don’t necessarily have the business model to support it on a sustainable basis,” he said.
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