Some sign appeared this week that China's trade conflict with the U.S. had an effect.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics revised the national growth rate for 2019 lower on Wednesday with major cuts in the manufacturing sector.
The downward adjustment gives the country a lower base from which to report growth for 2020.
Gross Domestic Product last year now rose only 6.0% to 98.65 trillion yuan ($15.1 trillion U.S.), versus 6.1% as previously reported, the bureau said.
The primary reason by far was a 503.8 billion yuan ($77.15 billion) reduction in manufacturing, or about 2% of the sector’s original contribution to growth in 2019.
Trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies began to escalate in 2018, with friction rising the following year as both countries applied tariffs on goods from the other and the U.S. putting major Chinese technology companies on blacklists. Both countries reached a temporary truce with the signing of the phase one trade agreement in January 2020.
