The economic news coming out of China is all pointing one way—downwards.
On Sunday, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for manufacturing dropped to 49.2 in October, the second straight month in which this key index for factory activity has fallen.
A worker wearing a face mask drills on a new apartment buildings under construction in Beijing on Oct. 26, 2021. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
With 50 marking the boundary between contraction and expansion, the October reading was lower than the 49.6 recorded for September and was the lowest since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in February last year. The figure was well below the 49.9 median forecast of economists polled by the Wall Street Journal.
The main factors in the lower result were rapidly rising raw material costs, a widespread power shortage and a sharp slowdown in the real estate sector. The property giant Evergrande…
