CHINA’S GDP CRUMBLES
China is sliding towards a deflation trap and may be in outright recession already if data are measured accurately, with serious knock-on risks for the global economy.
"It is too late to avoid a hard-landing," said Patrick Chovanec from Silvercrest Asset Management and a former professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University. "To keep growth going they have to push extremely high levels of investment to even more extreme levels, and that is becoming very hard to do and very hard to finance."
"The economic return on credit is rapidly declining. They increased loans by $1 trillion in the first quarter, but growth slid anyway and is now below levels seen in early 2009 after the Lehman crisis. It is no longer out of the question that GDP will actually fall," he said.
Diana Choyleva, from Lombard Street, said the official Chinese figures show that the economy contracted by 0.2% in the second quarter, rather than growing 1.7% (7.5% year-on-year) as claimed by the government.

