This time hard data too, via Reuters: China’s car sales fell the most in nearly seven years in September, stoking concerns the world’s biggest auto market could contract for the first time in decades this year amid cooling economic growth and a biting trade war. Vehicle sales slumped by 11.6 percent to 2.39 million units

Via Capital Economics: • Exports continued to defy US tariffs last month but imports softened in the face of cooling domestic demand. We expect both to weaken in the coming quarters as economic growth slows in China and among its major trading partners. • Export growth accelerated in September, from 9.8% y/y to 14.5% in

Via Bloomberg: China’s central bank cut the amount of cash lenders must hold as reserves for the fourth time this year, as policy makers seek to shore up the economy amid a worsening trade war. The People’s Bank of China lowered the required reserve ratio for some lenders by 1 percentage point, effective from Oct.

Via Capital Economics: • The latest PMI readings suggest that growth slowed last month. The breakdown points toward weaker exports, though it’s too soon to know if this is due to US tariffs or simply the result of cooling global growth. Meanwhile, a jump in the construction PMI suggests that fiscal easing may be gaining

Via China’s National Bureau: In September 2018 , the China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index ( PMI ) was 50.8% , down 0.5 percentage points from the previous month . It continued to operate in the boom zone, and the overall manufacturing industry continued to expand, and the growth rate slowed down. In terms of enterprise scale, the PMI of large enterprises is 52.1% , which is the same as last month, and

Via FTAlphaville: This summer Evergrande, the Shenzen- $144bn real-estate goliath, invested $860m in Faraday Future, an electric car maker aiming to take Tesla’s crown. The investment may have been defensive. Evergrande is diversifying its asset base away from its holdings of real estate; the move may be a hint about the future of China’s hyper-leveraged real estate

The AFR is reporting that China is stumped by trade war or, more to the point, Trumped: “We did get a sense of deep concern about the trade tension with the United States and that we could be in a period of prolonged and protracted trade tensions, and there isn’t all that much that the

China released August property price data over the weekend and the news is boom! Prices rose 1.4% on the month and 7% year on year: Price rises are widespread: It’s now only a handful of top tier cities sitting it out. Those with the most draconian macroprudential measures: Lower tier cities are accelerating: As we saw in

The PBOC released new yuan loans for August last night the news was Total Social Financing came in at 1.52tr yuan with banks making up 1.123tr of that: Shadow banking made its first positive contribution for four months: Year on year growth was up 2.7% but the three month moving average remains well negative at

Via the WSJ: Chinese leaders are stepping up a charm offensive with U.S. multinationals and dropping earlier threats of retaliation as Beijing changes tack to keep the trade fight with Washington from scaring off foreign investors. Beijing is offering a reassuring message in its outreach to American companies. At a meeting last month, Liu He,

Via Capital Economics: Pork prices jump, shipments to US accelerate despite tariffs • Consumer price inflation picked up last month, as African swine flu led to a jump in pork prices. But with broad price pressures still relatively subdued, it’s still too soon to sound the alarm on inflation. Export growth slowed, though this appears

China released August trade numbers over the weekend and it’d good news and bad news for the economic war. Imports rose 20% and exports 9.8.% with the surplus narrowing to $27.9bn: The Chinese trade surplus is trending down though, alas, with the US it hit a new record high at $31.05bn. We might expect this

Bad news for Aussie realty comes form Capital Economics: The People’s Bank is keeping its FX intervention off its balance sheet • The People’s Bank still appears reluctant to deploy its FX reserves in order to support the renminbi. We suspect that it is leaning on state-owned financial institutions to sell foreign assets in its

Via Capital Economics: • The latest survey data suggest that China’s economy continued to come under pressure last month. We expect further weakness ahead despite the shift toward policy easing. • The Caixin manufacturing PMI declined from 50.8 in July to a 14-month low of 50.6 in August. This was weaker than anticipated (both the

Via China’s NBS: In August , the manufacturing PMI was 51.3% , up 0.1 percentage points from the previous month and unchanged from the annual average. Since the beginning of this year, except for the Spring Festival, the index has been operating within the 51.0% – 52.0% boom period, and the overall manufacturing industry has

At  Reuters today: China’s investment growth, already at record lows, may weaken even further in the future and authorities should step up fiscal and financial measures to give it a boost, the state planner said on Monday. Beijing is urging more infrastructure spending as the economy faces both domestic and external risks, such as U.S.

A nice piece from Jim Rickards cross-posted from the Austrians at Daily Reckoning: I’ve written for years that Chinese economic development is partly real and partly smoke and mirrors, and that it’s critical for investors to separate one from the other to make any sense out of China and its impact on the world. My longest piece on this topic

By Leith van Onselen I have noted previously how China’s economy is facing stiff headwinds from an ageing population (see here, here, here, and here). Essentially, China’s ageing problem stems from its ‘one child policy’, which was brought into effect in the early-1970s and is credited with preventing around 400 million births from 1979 to