China's August very weak data is a wake-up call - ING

Iris Pang, the economist for Greater China at ING, notes that China's fixed-asset investments and industrial production were very weak in August while retail sales growth was moderate.

• "Frankly speaking, August's industrial production and fixed asset investment data was a wake-up call. Even with a large fiscal stimulus in infrastructure investment, it will be hard to overcome the damage from the loss of export orders due to the trade war and the structural weakness in global demand for smartphones and related products, both of which are highly weighted in the industrial production data.
• The number of smartphones produced fell 10.7% year-on-year, which led to an overall drop of 6.2% YoY in electronic telecom devices. The production of cars fell 7.3% YoY. These products not only face headwinds from structural changes in their own markets but also from soft global demand.
• From fixed asset investments, we see that railway investment and mining supported most of the growth. Railway investment grew 11.0% YoY YTD while mining grew 26.2% YoY YTD.
• However, again, these investments cannot help sectors that are directly hit by the trade war. Textile investment fell 5.0% YoY YTD. 
• Retail sales grew 7.2% YoY. We believe that this was supported by the stable job market. The surveyed jobless rate edged down from 5.3% to 5.2%. 
• Apart from automobiles, all items reported positive year-on-year growth. One reason for this is that food prices have been high due to swine flu. 
• We believe that some consumers will spend money at home, rather than take overseas trips, which will be supportive to domestic retail sales.
• ...Due to the expected further damages from the trade and technology wars, we are revising our 2019 GDP growth forecast to 6.0%, and to 5.7% YoY and 5.8% YoY for 3Q19 and 4Q19, respectively. Our previous forecasts were 6.3% for 2019 and 6.1% YoY and 6.3% YoY in 3Q19 and 4Q19."