China Manufacturing Growth Slows as Policy Tightened

China’s manufacturing growth slowed for the first time in five months in December as the government tightened monetary policy and chased energy- efficiency and pollution targets.

A purchasing managers’ index released today by HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics fell to 54.4 from 55.3 in November. The data are seasonally adjusted and a reading above 50 indicates an expansion.

Rising corporate profits and expansions by companies including Aluminum Corp of China Ltd. and Volkswagen AG may help sustain manufacturing even as the government curbs lending growth. Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co. forecast interest rates will rise at least twice in the first half of 2011 after an increase on Christmas Day that was the nation’s second since the global financial crisis.

“We don’t expect the tightening to have a large negative effect on the growth outlook,” Stephen Schwartz, a Hong Kong-based chief economist for Asia at Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA, said before today’s report. The nation will enter 2011 with “stronger-than-expected momentum,” Schwartz said.

The purchasing managers’ index is based on a survey of executives at more than 430 companies and gives an indication of activity in the manufacturing sector. A separate government-backed PMI is due Jan. 1.

Profits Climb

Industrial companies’ profits climbed 49 percent in the first 11 months of 2010 to 3.88 trillion yuan （$585 billion）, according to a Dec. 27 government report.

Government measures that may cool growth span higher interest rates, a crackdown on real-estate speculation, and closures of energy-wasting and highly polluting factories. Officials have also boosted reserve requirements for lenders six times this year to counter the threat from inflation and limit asset bubbles in the real-estate market.

Consumer prices climbed 5.1 percent in November from a year earlier, the most in 28 months, and producer prices gained 6.1 percent. Peng Sen, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said the nation must prepare for a long-term fight against inflation, according to a Dec. 21 report on state television.

‘Consolidating’ Expansion

Companies in China, the world’s biggest maker of steel, cement and mobile phones, are expanding after exports topped pre-crisis levels. The momentum of economic growth is “consolidating,” the central bank said Dec. 27.

Aluminum Corp. of China, or Chalco, will build a 17.5 billion yuan base that includes alumina and aluminum smelting plants and a bauxite mine in the southwestern Guizhou province, according to a statement in the government-run People’s Daily newspaper.

German carmaker VW’s two joint ventures in China will spend 10.6 billion euros （$14 billion） in the world’s biggest auto market through 2015, adding two factories to help double production to 3 million cars a year, the company said last month.

--Zheng Lifei. With assistance from Sophie Leung in Hong Kong. Editors: Nerys Avery, Ken McCallum