Trump’s Trade War Is Taking Its Toll: China’s Financial Data Points To A Bleak Economic Outlook   

China’s financial condition worsened in October, pointing to a further slowdown in the world’s second-biggest economy amid fears over the impact of protracted trade war with the United States, South China Post has reported.

As per data released by the People’s Bank of China on Tuesday (13 November), new loans stood at 677 billion yuan (US$97.32 billion) in October nearly half of 1.38 trillion yuan (US$198.39 billion) reported in September.

Newly-added social financing, a measurement of funds that individuals and non-financial firms get from the financial system, was 728.8 billion yuan in October, down 471.6 billion yuan.

As economic growth support from China’s banking system has almost dried up despite concrete push via state spending, the government’s fiscal revenue growth entered negative territory for the first time this year with a 3.1 per cent year-on-year decline in October, as per official data.

The country's fiscal revenue stood at 1.57 trillion yuan (about 226 billion US dollars) last month, according to the Ministry of Finance (MOF). The Chinese government collected 768.4 billion yuan in fiscal revenue last month (October), down 7.1 per cent year on year.

Local governments though saw fiscal revenue rise 1 per cent to 804.3 billion yuan.

M2, which is a broad measure of money supply that covers cash in circulation and all deposits, rose 8 per cent year on year to 179.56 trillion yuan at the end of October, the People's Bank of China said in a statement on its website.

China’s economic growth has already decelerated to 6.5 per cent in the third quarter, the lowest growth since the 2008 financial crisis.

China’s personal income tax revenue increased by a paltry 7 per cent in October, decelerating by 13.8 per cent from September, because China started to implement a higher tax threshold from that month.

The report quoted a note by Lu Ting, chief China economist at Nomura International which said that the policy interventions so far were insufficient in shoring up China’s financial markets, pointing to an economic outlook that “would get worse before getting better”.