Chinese Economy Shows a Second Month of Anemic Growth

With negative sentiment toward China reaching an extreme in recent months, patient investors have been rewarded with recent news of improving data from the Asian giant.

By Willem Thorbecke Today, we're fortunate to have Willem Thorbecke, Senior Research Fellow at Asian Development Bank Institute and a Consulting Fellow at Japan's Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, as a guest contributor. Asia's role in the propagation of the global recession has been a subject of study, but relatively little attention has been devoted to the interaction of exchange rates a

Terrible economic numbers. Swooning stock prices. More central bank intervention. Snow. And it’s only the second week of April.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese industrial production weakened sharply in April as investment slowed to its lowest level in nearly a decade, showing an economy that is surprisingly vulnerable to a global slowdown and a credit crunch at home. Industrial production rose by 9.3 percent in April, the lowest level since May 2009, while retail sales surprised the market by slowing to a 14.1 percent rise, the lowest level in 14 months. Fixed asset investment rose by 20.2 in the first four months of the year, the slowest level since December 2002. "It's obviously much weaker than anyone had expected. 9.

A fresh batch of Chinese economic data came out last night, and it was mostly nothing to write home about. Via SocGen, the big numbers were:

At first glance, the explosion of credit in China last month is good news for the world’s second-largest economy, which has been struggling to recover from the impact of the European debt crisis and a downturn in the U.S.   New loans and other forms of financing jumped to 2.54 trillion yuan in January, more than double the previous year’s 955.9 billion yuan, and well ahead of December’s 1.63 trillion yuan, government data released this month shows.  

Growth in India's industrial output accelerated unexpectedly to 8.8 percent in June on an annual basis, official data showed Friday, despite sharply higher interest rates.The expansion in production by factories, mines and utilities sharply exceeded analysts' forecasts of 5.5 percent and marked a rebound from May when output grew by a revised 5.9 percent.The June performance was boosted by manufacturing output, which jumped 10 percent year-on-year, while capital goods production soared 37.7 percent, the Central Statistical Office said

India could be set for a fresh rate hike, analysts said Friday, as industrial output rebounded to double-digit growth in October, spurred by manufacturing as demand surged in the religious holidays.Output from factories, mines and utilities leapt 10.8 percent in October from a year earlier, according to the statistics office, marking a sharp pick-up from a 4.4 percent increase in September.Industrial production "came back with a vengeance," said HSBC chief India economist Leif Lybecker Eskesen.