Industrial production growth slowed sharply in July; no signs yet of infrastructure picking up the slack.

Delta is adding to the recent misery in retail sales; a Q3 GDP growth downgrade is now on the cards.

Japan's economy stabilised in the second quarter despite the rolling Covid hit and soft lockdowns.

Sometimes when you put together the Chinese data, it feels like you are drawing from multiple jigsaw puzzles, each with pieces missing.

We've expressed misgivings for some time about the sustainability of GDP quarterly growth into Q2.

We expect China's May activity data on Wednesday to lead to talk of slowdown, with the year- over-year growth rates for industrial production, retail sales, and the year-to-date, year-over-year rate for fixed assets all slowing.

It's now widely appreciated that Chinese exports are exposed, as the global economy switches lanes to services, from manufacturing.

Real sales growth was the big miss in the April activity data. 

The BoJ likely will leave policy unchanged at its meeting on Tuesday next week, following the policy review in March.

Covering China is often like being a data detective, fitting together the pieces of the puzzle to try to work out what is going on.

We can safely look through the plunge in China's trade surplus in the last couple of months, to $13.8B in March, from $37.9B in February.

Reader, beware. We will give you our conclusions upfront because this Monitor gets very technical, but China's January/February activity figures warrant that.

Forecasters are gradually easing into the implications of the hugely favourable base effects emanating from the impact of Covid in China early last year.