Over the weekend China released its April inflation figures and there was little to cheer about. The CPI is weak and the PPI unchanged from March at -4.6% suggesting no easing oversupply in the industrial economy or, put another way, ongoing hard landing:
Note the previous undulations in the PPI post 2011 and how each upturn (that is, deceleration in falling prices) has happened swiftly following stimulus. This time the depth, duration and trajectory is different with little sign yet of any impact from increasingly broad-based stimulus measures.
The Chinese industrial economy remains in a deep swoon that would have been thought of as a “hard landing” up until very recently when the goal posts shifted on such things.