By adopting China’s monetary data from 2008 to 2015, this paper measures the fluctuation value of quarterly potential output, inflation, interest rate, inflation expectation and other indexes. Then by constructing a framework of Poole analysis that encompasses functions of expectation and total supply, it compares the loss functions in the intermediate targets of two monetary policies in the hope of providing an analytical perspective for the choice of intermediate targets of monetary policy. The analysis finds that overall, quantity-based rules were superior to price-based rules between 2008 to 2017 with loss functions close to each other in values. However, based on the development of financial market, the year 2013 became a time node in that the superiority of price-based rules started to rise significantly after that and the ratio of loss function values rose to 1.467 from a previous 0.87 in the period of 2008-2012. Based on these, this paper holds that the cost advantage of price-based intermediate targets is gaining prominence and is more suitable to the present macroeconomic operation, which shows that the intermediate target of monetary policy should transform from quantity-based towards price-based.