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China data in spotlight after trade bounce raises recovery hopes

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Economists expect retail sales in China to register a 13.5 per cent rise, signalling that the economy may be bottoming out. Photo: Reuters

Global investors will look to a batch of Chinese data on Friday for evidence that a strong bounce in July trade was not a fluke and that the world’s second-largest economy is stabilising after more than two years of slowing growth.

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Economists were quick to point out that the overall trend remained subdued and it was too early to treat a 5.1 per cent rise in exports from a year ago and an even bigger 10.9 per cent jump in imports as signs of an imminent turnaround.

Indeed, exports in the three months ended July 31 posted the slowest annual increase since October 2009, Reuters calculations showed.

But Thursday’s figures, which handily beat market expectations, raised hopes that China could be spared a sharp slowdown that dismal June figures, when exports fell for the first time in 17 months, seemed to suggest.

Economists polled by Reuters are looking for an annual 9 per cent rise in China’s industrial output in July and a 13.5 per cent increase in retail sales. The numbers are due at 0530 GMT.

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Fixed asset investment is forecast to have risen 20 per cent in the first seven months of the year, in line with growth in the first six months, while inflation, due at 0130 GMT, is forecast to have quickened to a five-month high of 2.8 per cent.

 

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