Asia Insights: China monthly: July data preview

Research evidence excerpt

Asia Insights: China monthly: July data preview

Global Markets Research

30 July 2026Asia Insights

Economics - Asia ex-Japan

Research Analysts

China monthly: July data preview Asia Economics

Jing Wang - NIHK

With real GDP growth in Q2 the lowest post-Covid reading, June activity data continued to jing.wang@nomura.com

show a large divide between strong exports and weak domestic demand. We expect such +852 2252 1011

a trend to continue in July. High-frequency data point to a modest rebound in crude oil Harrington Zhang - NIHK

imports in July, which could ease some supply disruptions to the oil-related sectors. harrington.zhang@nomura.com

However, such stabilization might prove short-lived, owing to the re-escalation of the +852 2252 2057

Middle East conflict in mid-July. The sharp deterioration in domestic demand in Q2 Hannah Liu - NIHK

prompted the Politburo meeting to emphasize the need to step up pro-growth policy hannah.liu@nomura.com

measures and speed up fiscal spending, while we believe the scale of such measures +852 2252 1082

might be limited, due to Beijing’s concerns of diminishing returns on investment and Ting Lu - NIHK

unmanageable fiscal deficits. Moreover, as the fruits of AI-driven growth are mainly reaped ting.lu@nomura.com

by a few “smart” cities and the AI boom has led to ageographicK-shape, the K-shaped +852 2252 1306

economy naturally reduces the urgency for an aggressive, sweeping stimulus.

We expect mixed PMIs and activity data

As favourable seasonal factors have subsided, we expect the official manufacturing PMI to

drop to 49.9 in July from 50.3 in June, while the official non-manufacturing PMI might also

fall in July to 49.9 from 50.2 in June on lackluster domestic demand. By contrast, thanks to