China today released another set of statistics showing that the world’s second-largest economy is growing significantly slower than the government in Beijing had planned. In addition, China’s statistics bureau has stopped publishing data on youth unemployment.
Slowing sales growth
Retail sales increased 2.5 percent year-on-year in July, compared with 3.1 percent growth in June. The result fell well short of analysts’ estimates in a Reuters poll, who had instead expected growth to accelerate, to an average of 4.5 percent. Industrial production then slowed its annual growth rate to 3.7 percent from 4.4 percent in June. Analysts had expected manufacturing to maintain June’s growth rate.
“We need to strengthen the role of macroeconomic policy in regulating the economy and make sufficient efforts to boost domestic demand, strengthen confidence and also prevent risks,” the statistics office said. It said the situation in China and abroad is complicated and domestic demand is weak.
More evidence of a weakening Chinese economy
A third piece of evidence that the Chinese economy is weakening is data on fixed asset investment, which includes factories, infrastructure and the like. From January to the end of July, the volume of such investment rose by 3.4 percent year-on-year, slowing from 3.8 percent in the January to June period. Here too, analysts had expected the pace of growth to remain at least where it was at the end of the previous month.
Source Czech Press Office
