On the morning of December 31, 2018, the Website of the National Bureau of Statistics released the purchasing Managers index of China in December of that year. China's manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) released this month came in at 49.4%, down 0.6 percentage points from the previous month and below the 50-percent mark separating expansion from contraction. It is the first time since July 2016 that the index has fallen below the line that separates expansion from contraction.

Reporters noted that three of the five components of the PMI (production, new orders, raw material inventories, employees and suppliers' delivery times) were below the 50% dividing line.

Among them, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, the index of new orders this month is 49.7%, 0.7 percentage points lower than the previous month, below the critical point, indicating that manufacturing enterprises have reduced the order quantity of products; The raw material inventory index was 47.1 percent, 0.3 percentage points lower than the previous month, below the critical point, indicating that the decline in the inventory of major raw materials in the manufacturing industry has expanded. The employment index was 48.0%, down 0.3 percentage points from the previous month and below the tipping point, indicating that manufacturing firms are hiring fewer workers.

Zhao Qinghe, senior statistician at the Service Industry Research Center of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that China's manufacturing environment has been changing steadily due to the recent aggravation of international trade frictions and the slowdown of global economic growth. Specifically, downward pressure on market demand, business expectations tend to be cautious. At the same time, some industries have gradually entered the production of the off-season, enterprises for the near future market expectations cautious.

Yang Chang, senior macro analyst at Zhongtai Securities, told the National Business Daily that a number of linked data in the PMI index this month pointed to contraction. For example, the new export orders index and the import index for December were 46.6%, respectively.