The Chinese economy presents a strange picture of pallid lassitude. While much of the world grapples with inflation, Beijing faces the opposite: Deflation in producer prices, and low consumer price inflation. While central banks elsewhere have been jacking up interest rates, their Chinese counterpart has been easing up on monetary policy. While there is a stock-market boom in countries like India, the Shanghai Composite index is lower than it was in 2009! In a manufacturing powerhouse, industrial production is lower than the pre-Covid level four years earlier. Credit growth too is falling, as is the yuan against the dollar. All this has sapped confidence in the narrative of economic recovery after a slack 2022.
Growth last calendar year was expected