People walk through a gate in the Forbidden City in Beijing, capital of China, March 27, 2023.Xinhua News Agency | Xinhua News Agency | Getty ImagesChina’s factory activity in August shrank for a fifth straight month, while non-manufacturing activity hit a new low for the year — signs that the slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy may not yet have bottomed out.The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index rose slightly to 49.7 in August from 49.3 in July, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics released Thursday. This was better than the median forecast for 49.4 in a Reuters poll.A PMI reading above 50 indicates expansion in activity, while a reading below that level points to a contraction.”The survey results show that insufficient market demand is still the main problem that enterprises are facing, and the foundation for the recovery and development of the manufacturing industry needs to be further consolidated,” Zhao Qinghe, a senior NBS official, said in a statement.While there were some green shoots in the s …
