Chinese say inflation too high, see better trend

A record 49.2 percent of Chinese consumers think prices are unacceptably high, according to a quarterly central bank survey released on Thursday.

That was up from 47.6 percent in the previous poll.

But only 48.9 percent of those polled expect inflation to increase in the second quarter compared with 64.8 percent who had expected a rise at the time of the previous survey, the People's Bank of China said.

Consumer inflation hit a near 12-year high of 8.7 percent in February.