Official manufacturing gauge indicates factory activity in stasis for July

China’s official Purchasing Manager’s Index of factory activity fell to a five-month low of 50 in July, indicating neither contraction nor expansion for the sector, Bloomberg reported. “The internal and external demand for the manufacturing sector is still on the weak side,” Zhao Qinghe, senior statistician at the national statistics bureau, said in a statement released on Saturday. The data echoes a private PMI that weakened in July, an indication that interest-rate cuts and efforts to shore up local government finances have yet to spark a recovery despite recent signs of stabilization.