By MarketWatch
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — China’s official manufacturing index out Saturday was bad, and the privately-compiled version from HSBC on Monday was worse, hitting the lowest since March 2009.
And right on cue, the stock markets in Hong Kong and Shanghai moved higher, with the Hang Seng Index (HSI:HK:HSI) swinging from a 0.5% opening loss to a 0.4% gain after the HSBC numbers.
We’ve seen this story before. Markets want more monetary easing from China, and some fiscal stimulus as well, and each glum data point out of Beijing seems to convince investors anew that big moves are coming to prop up the economy.
The problem is, however, that Chinese policy makers don’t seem in any great hurry to grant the market’s wishes.
For one thing, People’s Bank of China Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan isn’t exactly playing the role of a Chinese Ben Bernanke or Mario Draghi in terms of offering reassuring words whenever the data turn down.
