Although the People's Bank of China has reiterated that it will maintain a "prudent" monetary policy this year, analysts said that money supply and lending data released by the central bank on Wednesday confirm that there's already been a tightening.

"The central bank adopted rational, appropriate macroeconomic control measures in 2013, promoting stable economic growth and basic price stability," Sheng Songcheng, head of the statistics and analysis department of the PBOC, said on Wednesday.

"This year, the bank will maintain and fine-tune its prudent monetary policy, making the policy neither too loose nor too tight to create a good environment for steady economic growth."