Consumer prices rose 6.4 percent over a year ago, a sharp jump from May’s 5.5 percent rate, data showed Saturday. It was driven by a 14.4 percent rise in politically volatile food costs, up from 11.7 percent in May.

“This far exceeds expectations,” said IHS Global Insight analyst Alistair Thornton.

Communist leaders declared taming prices their priority this year and have been frustrated as inflation rose steadily, even as manufacturing and other activity eased in the face of repeated interest rate hikes and other controls.

Inflation is politically dangerous for the ruling communists because it erodes economic gains that underpin their claim to power and can fuel unrest.

The cabinet’s planning agency had forecast that June inflation would likely exceed May’s increase due to summer flooding that damaged crops and pushed up prices of pork and vegetables.

The price of pork, the country’s staple meat, jumped 57.1 percent in June, the National Bureau of Statistics reported. That is especially sensitive in a society where poor families spend up to half their incomes on food.

The June figures were released earlier in the month than usual in what the bureau said is a new policy to prevent leaks by announcing data as soon as they are compiled.

A state newspaper said last month that several officials of the bureau and China’s central bank were fired on suspicion of leaking data to stock brokerages, which might have profited from being able to anticipate changes in financial markets.

Analysts blame the inflation spike on the dual pressures of consumer demand that is outstripping food supplies and a bank lending boom they say Beijing allowed to run too long after it helped China ward off the 2008 global crisis.

Li Peilan, a 70-year-old Beijing housewife, said food costs consume nearly half her family’s 6,000 yuan monthly income.

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