China’s slowdown, hitherto confined to the property and industrial sectors, is spreading to consumers. Official retail sales growth is still over 10% a year, says Aaron Black in The Wall Street Journal, but the figures are notoriously flawed.
Analysts at Nielsen reckon sales of ‘everyday’ goods such as food and toiletries are growing just 3% year-on-year. Anecdotal evidence supports this: Unilever says Chinese sales slid by a fifth in the third quarter.