China's inflation almost touched 5 per cent, crossing over the 4 per cent limit set by the government.
China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 4.9 per cent year on year in February, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced on Friday.
The increase was the same as in January.
China's January inflation figure remained stubbornly high at 4.9 per cent, despite a series of measures taken to curb price rises. The growth accelerated from 4.6 per cent in December but was lower than the 28-month high of 5.1 per cent in November, NBS said.
NBS spokesperson Sheng Laiyun said food prices, which account for nearly a third of the basket of goods in the nation's CPI calculation, surged 11 per cent year on year in February.
Non-food prices rose 2.3 per cent from a year earlier.
China has adjusted the weight of items in its CPI calculation from the start of the year, with the food weighting pushed down 2.21 percentage points and property-related weighing up 4.22 percentage points.
The February CPI was higher than market forecasts of 4.8 per cent and above the government's target of 4 per cent for this year.
Sheng attributed the increase to price hikes during the Spring Festival holiday and seasonal factors.
He said the upward trend may continue as quantitative easing by some countries has resulted in higher commodity prices.
But the government is confident of curbing inflation as abundant grain
reserves, the oversupply of industrial products and the country's prudent monetary policy will help, state run Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying.
Meanwhile, China's Central Bank said China can not use the exchange rate policy as a major tool to tame inflation.
Asked whether China would make a one-off appreciation of the yuan to ease rising domestic price pressures, Central Bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said the interest rate policy remains an important tool to curb inflation although higher interest rates might lead to capital inflows.
China will continue to push forward the yuan's exchange rate reform in a self-initiated, controllable and gradual manner and enhance the flexibility of the exchange rate, he said.
"We will use price and quantitative tools such as interest rates, banks' reserve requirements and open market operations to maintain appropriate liquidity in the banking system," said a statement before the press conference.
"China will implement dynamic differentiated reserve requirement ratios to guide stable and moderate growth in money and credit," it said.
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