Customers purchase pork at a food market in Shanghai in June. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg Bloomberg News China’s consumer prices grew faster than expected in June, partly driven by a rebound in pork prices, although the government’s Covid Zero strategy continued to depress demand. Factory-gate inflation moderated on cooling commodity prices. Consumer prices grew 2.5% last month from a year earlier, beating economists’ expectations of a 2.4% gain, the National Bureau of Statistics data showed Saturday. That is the strongest pace in two years and compares with 2.1% growth in May. The producer price index, meanwhile, rose 6.1%, above the median forecast of a 6% increase in a Bloomberg survey of economists, though lower than May’s 6.4%. “China’s June inflation data signal slack demand,” Eric Zhu of Bloomberg Economics wrote on Saturday. “Core prices outside food and energy barely budged — a sign that Covid Zero restrictions continue to stifle […]