China is going ex-growth

Monday, 16 September 2019

China is going ex-growth. The August monthly data dump is unequivocal. Industrial production slumped to the lowest year dot at 4.4%, fixed asset investment is slowing too at 5.5% and retail is tracking both down at 7.5%:

The trends are rock solid down.

Under the bonnet the news is also bad for the growth mix. While industry is being put to the sword by the trade war, the offset of fixed asset investment continues an ever increasing imbalance of unproductive debt wasted on pointless construction:

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.