China’s Factory Activity Shrinks Again as Gloom Persists

(Bloomberg) — China’s manufacturing activity contracted for the fifth consecutive month in August, as calls grow for President Xi Jinping’s government to take concrete steps to boost the world’s second-largest economy.

The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index rose slightly to 49.7 last month, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, in contraction but still an improvement over the 49.3 reading in July. That was better than the median estimate of 49.2 in a Bloomberg survey of economists.