I noted on 8/18 that China’s superb 23% retail sales growth needed to be put into context with the sharp decline we’re seeing in other non-Japan Asian nations. The chart below looks at it a different way… It takes retail sales 2 yr trend and subtracts 2-yr CPI growth to show what I think is a more representative view of real underlying normalized spending patterns. Yes, there is still an Olympic-sized bump over the past two months, but over a broader 10-year context, it’s not tough to argue that China is slowing.
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