The January's figure was the highest monthly level since 1997. The previous record was pinned at 7.0 percent in December of 1996.

    The 7.1-percent rise was as expected by most market analysts, but slightly lower than the prediction of China's major state-owned bank. The Bank of China forecast the CPI for January would jump 7.5 percent or higher.

    The bureau said food prices ballooned 18.2 percent in January from a year earlier, grain prices rose 5.7 percent and cooking oil prices increased by 37.1 percent.

    Pork prices, which had been blamed as the major factor driving up CPI figures throughout the later half of last year, soared 58.8percent in January, the bureau said.

    "The CPI was mainly driven up by factors including the severe snow disaster that ravaged more than half of the country's areas and food price hikes during the Spring Festival," said Yao Jingyuan, the chief economist of the NBS.

    Yao's opinion, however, didn't win support from other economists. Song Guoqing, a professor with the China economic research center under the Peking University, deemed that heavy snows, starting to fall only since the later half of the month, were limited in impact on January's prices.

    "The influence of the snow disaster may emerge in a longer term," said Song, predicting February's CPI might be driven up above eight percent.

    Song attributed January's CPI hike mainly to a too rapid growth of money supply. Measures including raising interest rates and reserve requirement ratio by the central bank are still too weak to rein in the over-growing money supply since last July, he said.

    "Interest rates climb up clumsily after the CPI rises, but the real interest rates are actually dropping," he said.

    "Though the increase rate of China's trade surplus was slowing down, hot money kept flowing in," he said, adding the money pouring into bonds and stocks also grew rapidly, which he suggested should be taken into consideration when calculating the general money supply.

    The central bank shall further tighten its monetary policies, put a brake on loans and accelerate the appreciation of the Renminbi, or Chinese yuan, he said.