China Is Still What It Used to Be

Workers check Spiderman dolls assembled at the production line of Dongguan Da Lang Wealthwise Plastic Factory in Dongguan, Guangdong Provinse, China, on Sep. 4, 2007. Feng Li/Getty Images

Commentary

The recent China data often shocked the market, foreigners, and local analysts. Sometimes it was a fight between the official and private data sources like PMI; sometimes, it was a mismatch between domestic and foreign sources like trade data.