China's PMIs continue to impress despite the fact they continue to be wholly unimpressive. As with most economic numbers in today's stock-focused obsessiveness, everything is judged solely by how much it "surprises." Surprises who? Doesn't matter; some faceless group of analysts and Economists whose short-term modeling has somehow become the very standard of performance.
According to one such group, China's official manufacturing index, the one calculated and maintained by the government (via its National Bureau of Statistics), solidly "beat" expectations. The headline was thought to have declined from May's 50.6 to somewhere around 50.2. Instead,