China’s economy softened last month, extending a slowdown in industrial activity and real estate prices as Beijing faces pressure to ramp up spending to stimulate demand.
Data published by the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Saturday showed weakening activity across industrial production, retail sales and real estate last month compared with July.
“We should be aware that the adverse impacts arising from the changes in the external environment are increasing,” NBS chief economist Liu Aihua (劉愛華) said in a news conference.
Photo: AFP
Liu said that demand remained insufficient at home, and the sustained economic recovery still confronts multiple difficulties and challenges.
While industrial production rose 4.5 percent last month compared with a year earlier, it declined from July’s 5.1 percent growth, according to the bureau’s data.
Retail sales grew 2.1 percent from the same time last year, slower than the 2.7 percent increase last month.
Fixed asset investment rose 3.4 percent from January to last month, down from 3.6 percent in the first seven months.
Meanwhile, investment in real estate in the first eight months declined 10.2 percent from a year earlier.
Trade data for last month saw imports grow just 0.5 percent compared with a year earlier.
The consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.6 percent last month, missing forecasts according to data released on Monday, while the core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose just 0.3 percent, the slowest in more than three years.
“The momentum is slowing down… The bottleneck remains domestic demand,” Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd senior China strategist Xing Zhaopeng (邢兆鵬) said.
The one bright spot has been exports, but analysts are not sure for how long the trend of rising exports would continue, given the increasing trade tensions with some countries and regions.
“As we are already toward the tail-end of the third quarter, time is running low for policymakers to introduce measures to buoy the economy amid numerous headwinds,” ING Bank NV chief China economist Lynn Song (宋林) said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
“The Q3 GDP is likely to be lower than Q2 based on current data flows. We expect large-scale stimulus to come soon,” Xing said.
Some other economic indicators released on Saturday too were unflattering. China’s nationwide survey-based jobless rate climbed to 5.3 percent last month from 5.2 percent in the previous month, the NBS said, adding that more college graduates entered the job market to hunt offers.
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