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China PMI Falters Again in June — Are the Numbers Real?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics and the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing showed that June PMI was weak — another sign that troubled economies in Europe, and perhaps internal demand in the People’s Republic, have stumbled badly. If the primary cause is the recession in most EU nations, the figures will get worse.

The official PMI index for June was 50.2 compared to 50.4 in May.

The silver lining was that “Surveys by Reuters and Bloomberg News indicated that economists had expected the PMI to slip just below 50, into contraction,” according to MarketWatch.

The PMI figures may also have been manipulated higher than they actually were. More and more China observers and economists believe that data from the People’s Republic is flawed, either because the large provinces make up figures to please the central government, or the central government itself sets figures to show the nation has not started a sharp slide in GDP. Some experts believe that GDP expansion in China could be as slow as 7% in the third quarter — a near collapse compared to the tradition rate of 10%.

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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