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China’s April slowdown highlights dilemma between growth and inflation
China’s retail sales slowed to just 0.2% year-on-year in April, down from 1.7%, coming in much worse than market forecasts for a modest acceleration. This was the slowest month of growth since 2022. The weakness of retail sales was broad-based. There are two key themes for this month's data. The first theme is that we're now paying the price for front-loaded demand from the trade-in policy, which we have been warning about since last year. Auto sales also continued to show signs of weakness, down -15.3% YoY. Replacement demand for vehicles purchased in previous years hasn't come in yet, and many prospective buyers ... (full story)
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From investinglive.com | May 17, 2026
China's economy lost significant momentum in April, with industrial output and retail sales both badly missing forecasts, as the compounding pressures of higher energy costs from the Iran war and chronically weak domestic demand took hold. Factory output rose 4.1% from a year earlier, a sharp deceleration from the 5.7% recorded in March and the slowest pace ...
In the January-April period, under the strong leadership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, all regions and departments fully implemented the decisions and arrangements made by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, adhered to the general principle of pursuing progress while ensuring ...
Confirming our Sunday preview, overnight China reported growth data which slowed across the board in April with investment resuming declines, retail sales missing sales and growing at the weakest rate in 4 years while industrial production rose at the slowest pace in three years, calling into question Beijing's reluctance to add stimulus to the economy as a ...
