Keep calm: August blip doesn’t mean an imminent hard-landing

Summary

China’s government announced a batch of important activity indicators over the weekend, among which, industrial production, retail sales and fixed asset investment, were all below market expectations as well as have slowed from their outturns in the previous month. Although the slowdown in growth momentum is evident, we believe that the case might not be as bad as the headline figures showed. Nevertheless, the disappointing prints of August activity indicators did sound the alarm for the authorities. To a large extent, they show that the stimulus packages tend to become less effective and short-lived after they were frequently used over the past several years to lift growth out of downturns.

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