The consumer price index — a key gauge of retail inflation — hit 3.8 percent last month Producer prices, meanwhile, saw their steepest decline in two years BEIJING: China’s consumer prices grew at their fastest rate in almost eight years in October driven by a spike in meat prices caused by an outbreak of African swine fever, according to official figures released Saturday. The consumer price index (CPI) — a key gauge of retail inflation — hit 3.8 percent last month, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, up from 3.0 percent in September and the highest annual rate since January 2012. Analysts in a Bloomberg News poll had forecast a rate of 3.4 percent. The spike has led the government to intervene to stabilize prices and guarantee supplies, according to the official Xinhua news agency. “Chinese leaders are terrified of inflation,” Beijing-based research firm Trivium China said in a note, describing price rises as “one of the big drivers behind the 1989 Tiananmen protests.” The inflation rate at the time of the student-led uprising stood at 18.25 percent. Producer prices, meanwhile, saw their steepest decline in two years, sliding for a sixth straight month, hit by the trade war with the United States. The producer price index (PPI) — an important barometer of the industrial sector that measures the cost of goods at the factory gate — contracted 1.6 percent in October from the previous year, the NBS said. That came after prices shrank 1.2 percent in December, and represented the sharpest decline since August 2016. Analysts in a Bloomberg poll had forecast producer prices would shrink 1.5 percent.