Chinese Economic Data Just Continues to Disappoint

Despite the fact that Chinese private sector debt is growing at nearly twice the rate of overall GDP growth, as we highlighted here, Chinese economic data continues to miss expectations to an extent not seen since 2008-2009 (first chart below). Last week it was trade and today it's industrial output and retail sales, both of which remained at levels indicative of weak and slowing growth in the world's second largest economy (second and third charts below). So, as one would expect, economic growth forecasts just keep coming down with the weaker data (fourth chart below).