China booms. Not

China has released its May data and the news is boom! Not. The data is so distorted by COVD base effects that it’s still very difficult to read. Simple year-on-year and year-to-date comparisons looks outrageously good. Year-to-date growth to the end of May is 17.8% for industrial production, 25.7% for fixed asset investment and 15.4% for retail sales:

But if we use 2019 comparisons, the year-to-date numbers fall very heavily to 4.2% for fixed-asset investment, industrial production 7% and retail sales of 4.3%.

Turning to segments, the all-important real state continues its slowing trends. Sales are still strong but growth is falling fast:

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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.