The Chinese economy's figures during the past few months have fallen way beyond analysts' predictions and the bad news is -- they see more disappointing numbers looming in the horizon.
The country's overall economic landscape has consistently remained in a very slow trajectory, especially for this month, with bleak output coming from the manufacturing and retailing sectors, not to mention a trade dispute with the US that added to the misery.
Based on a Bloomberg Economic gauge which aggregates the most recent available indicators from the business and trade front, the country's economy has remained stagnant for five straight months, with factory, trade, and small businesses optimism all weakening.
A quarterly report by the China Beige Book posted late Wednesday indicated that growth crawled in the third quarter this year while total government debt rates increased.
Volume of sales, profits, revenue, local and foreign export orders and employment growth were all down in the last nine months, the report disclosed, citing CBB's survey of over 3,300 Chinese companies and enterprises.
There is a big possibility that quarterly growth improvement will fall under 7 percent, according to CBB, though the country's economy may normalize in the next three months in some degree due to the resumption of US-China trade discussion, The Bank of China reported.
The ratio of what market observers call "shadow banking" to China's total borrowing was also noted to have been the second-biggest on record. The term shadow banking refers to decentralized lending activities that usually pose a huge amount of risk as these are subjected to minimal regulatory monitoring.
The country's official economic figures in 2018, which market analysts do not always agree to, indicated that improvement in the final quarter was a measly 6.3 percent, pulling down the yearly rate to its most laggard since 1990 at 6.5 percent.
In the first quarter of 2019, the rate of trade and economic increase was pegged at 6.2 percen, and fell to 6.1 percent in the next. The country is seen to report its third-quarter GDP middle of next month.
In another survey conducted by the Standard Chartered Bank, it showed that small business optimism was down this month after it stabilized in August. The real estate market, the bank said, was bearing tremendous weight on overall output with private companies showing negativity in the survey, and with outlook dropping.
Meanwhile, conditions disclosed by corporate executives and sales managers dropped to the lowest mark in over six years in August and continued at this pace the following month, a report by the World Economics Ltd. showed.
