Rise of the smartphone economy

Finance | Ed Zhang

Measuring China's change is hard. There are few indicators that readily correlate with business overall. Yes, we know that cities' residential housing prices have been on the decline and there is less demand for energy and steel. But how much do they affect GDP and employment? There isn't a fixed formula.

And yes, we know that while manufacturing activities remain weak, suggesting a continuing slowdown in industrial growth, the economy is showing some resilience outside the factory sector - given that the official non-manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index rose to 53.9 in November from 53.8 in October, while the HSBC China services PMI rose to 53 from 52.9. But how can people quantify that as resilience? And to what extent can the growth of services offset the slowdown in industry? People don't have interpretive clues.