Summary
China’s November economic data showed slower-than-expected retail sales growth of 3.3%, down from 4.8% in October, despite government stimulus efforts like subsidies and shopping promotions.
Industrial output grew 5.4%, meeting expectations. Officials pledged a “moderately loose” monetary policy, reduced interest rates, and support for the property sector to reignite economic momentum.
Markets reacted mildly, with Shanghai recovering losses but Hong Kong’s Hang Seng falling 0.5%.
As China braces for potential U.S. trade pressures under Trump’s second term, its statistics agency warned of tougher conditions in 2025 and called for continued recovery efforts.
While not saying China is not capitalist (to an extent), I don’t think that’s quite true. You might care about it if you utilize markets to determine prices and production in a part of the economy. As far as I know markets aren’t necessarily capitalist. Besides, even fully command economies have relied on people choosing to go to the store or a market to buy what they feel they need. The factories didn’t dump their output into people’s homes without consent in East Germany. The basic economic cogs - people doing work to transform natural resources into things them and others need or want, along with other people doing that and buying things from them - doesn’t change. So if consumer spending changes in a way that doesn’t work well for the economy the central planners want, they still have a problem. That’s not different. What’s different is what solutions can a non-capitalist government employ compared to a capitalist one.