China’s slowdown will ripple across Asia and the rest of the world, knocking commodity markets like steel and iron ore that are reliant on the country’s construction activity. With Beijing tightening its grip on the property market as part of a broader effort to tackle financial risks, real-estate sales and prices are already falling.
Meanwhile, a power shortage last month curbed factory production, pushing the purchasing managers index down enough to signal a manufacturing contraction for the first time since the pandemic started -- even if frontloaded export orders for Christmas could have offset some of that.
