Consumer prices slid at a faster pace in July and industrial production unexpectedly slumped, raising the danger that the world's third-largest economy has slipped back into a contraction.
The benchmark price gauge, which excludes fresh food, fell 0.3 percent in July from a year before, putting the central bank's 1 percent inflation goal farther from reach, a government report said Friday.
Separate government data also showed the same day that industrial output fell 1.2 percent. A private measure of manufacturing for August was the lowest since the March 2011 disasters.