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China PMI Slides as World Economy Cools

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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China’s PMI is not a bad marker for global economic activity. That being said, a key measure of it, issued by HSBC, showed a rapid contraction in May.

The HSBC Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to 48.7, down from 49.3 in April.

“Manufacturing activities softened again in May, reflecting the deteriorating export situation. This calls for more aggressive policy easing, as inflation continues to slow,” HSBC’s chief China economist, Hongbin Qu, said in a statement.

Policy may not do the trick. Most of the economies in the European Union, the largest region in the world by GDP, are either in recession or close to it. And, China’s own middle class has reason to be concerned about both wages and jobs as factory production falters.

China’s GDP growth is now pegged by some economists to be as low as 8.2%. That is a surge by most measures, but not in China.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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