Dow Jones Market Wrap reports:
...China's economy weakened sharply during the first two months of the year, deepening concerns that growth in the world's second-largest economy would decelerate further.
The country's top leaders now have tough decisions about whether to set aside economic overhaul measures that could pinch growth in the short-term.
The slowdown was across the board, including retail, manufacturing, housing and investment, as the National Bureau of Statistics released a raft of data on Thursday for January and February, which was combined to adjust for distortions from the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday. Some of the results were the weakest since the global financial crisis of 2009. "This is terrible," said Liu Li-Gang, a Hong Kong-based economist at ANZ Bank. "I wasn't expecting high figures, but this is worse than I thought."
The results were announced shortly before Chinese Premier Li Keqiang gave mixed signals in a news conference about how wedded he was to meeting the country's growth target of about 7.5%. In an answer to one question, he detailed how hard the government pushed to meet the same target in 2013, as a way to head off unemployment. China's GDP grew by 7.7% last year...
Since the great recession, the vast majority of China's investments has been directed toward internal development. China's role as chief BRIC layer as a driver of global growth has cooled significantly as the USA continues its tepid recovery.
SME's with supply chain, export market exposures or market contagion risk linkages to a slowing business cycle in China need to be wary of this emerging macroeconomic risk factor.
Download Sum2's Macroeconomic Risk and Event App (MERA) on Google Play to assess your company's macro risk factors and what you can do to profit from them.
Risk: economic, political, market, supply chain
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