The News
China’s export growth was below analysts’ forecasts, a shortfall blamed on weaker global demand.
The worse-than-expected trade data adds to the difficulties facing Beijing: The property sector and local governments are laden with huge debt, youth unemployment is high, and fears of deflation persist.
The slowdown is having far-reaching consequences within China, with interest in government jobs, for example, reaching the highest level in decades as new graduates seek out stable — if lower-paying — work.
Western economists have counseled Beijing to focus on growing domestic spending, but Chinese authorities view consumption as “an individualistic distraction” that diverts focus from the country’s “core economic strength: its industrial base,” an expert wrote in Foreign Affairs.
