一月份，中国居民消费价格指数创下5年来的新低，而工厂通缩恶化，经济持续走弱，决策者面临更大压力出台刺激增长的政策。请看本报昨日的报道：

    China’s annual consumer inflation hit a five-year low in January while factory deflation deepened, underscoring persistent weakness in the economy and heaping more pressures on policymakers to step up their efforts to support growth.

    The risk of deflation is rising as the world’s second-largest economy faces headwinds from a property market downturn and widespread factory overcapacity, and the situation may have been worsened by falling global commodity prices, analysts say.

    The consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.8 percent in January from December, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday.

    报道中的deflation就是“通缩”，而相反的就是inflation (通胀)。