Shijiazhuang's consumer price index (CPI), a major gauge of inflation, rose 2.7 percent year-on-year in the first six months of this year, according to the Shijiazhuang survey team of the National Bureau of Statistics.

Food prices in Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei province, gained by 4.2 percent year-on-year. Food prices account for about a third of the weighting in calculating the CPI.

By Song Jingli