China's flash manufacturing PMI edges up to 47.8

But this marks the eleventh consecutive month that the PMI is below 50.

According to Nomura, the HSBC flash manufacturing PMI for China rose to 47.8 in September from 47.6 in August, but was still well below the expansion-contraction 50 mark. There was no consensus forecast. September marks the eleventh consecutive month that the HSBC PMI has been below 50.

Here's more from Nomura:

The HSBC PMI is compiled from a poll of some 400 manufacturing companies which tend to be more export orientated than those surveyed in the official PMI, which may help explain why, this year, the HSBC PMI has been weaker than the official PMI.

The flash HSBC PMI is usually not revised significantly in the final PMI, which will be released on 29 September (in August, the final PMI was revised down to 47.6 from the flash estimate of 47.8).

From a simple OLS regression between the HSBC PMI and the official PMI (R-squared is 0.63) the HSBC PMI predicts a rise in the official PMI (due 1 October) to 49.9 in September from 49.2 in August. Nomura's forecast for the official PMI in September is 49.8.

Overall, the HSBC PMI was the first macro data point for September, and suggests that China's economy may be starting to stabilise. The core data for September, to be released in the second week of October, will be more important, and includes fixed-asset investment, exports industrial output, and particularly forward-looking indicators of policy stimulus, such as newly planned investment projects and total social financing.

The HSBC PMI tentatively supports our view that China's economy is starting to stabilise. We believe China's GDP growth will rise slightly from 7.6% y-o-y in Q2 to 7.8% in Q3, and then pick up more strongly to 8.8% in Q4 as the policy stimulus gains traction.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia