China’s official purchasing managers’ index held at 49.8 in October from the previous month, indicating factory activity had stabilized but remained below below the 50-point mark that delineates contraction from expansion, The Financial Times reported, citing new data from the National Bureau of Statistics. The data showed that industrial profits declined just 0.1% year-on-year in September, compared with an 8.7% drop in August. But ANZ economists Liu Li-gang and Louis Lam argued that this improvement was largely because of temporary factors such as tax relief and that the sector will continue to face strong headwinds.