BEIJING--Two measures of the health of China's struggling manufacturing industry point to persisting headwinds for the world's second-largest economy.
While September's official purchasing managers index, released Thursday, registered a modest improvement over August's results, the gauge of factory activity also showed that manufacturing continued to contract at a time when the world is increasingly focused on China's growth prospects.
China is struggling to meet its growth target of about 7% this year, its slowest annual pace in a quarter century. While the government says the economy hit that mark in the first half of the year, signs since then show flagging growth, and economists said performance in the third quarter appears to have slipped.
"There's no sense that things are roaring back," said ING economist Tim Condon. "But there is support for the view that July and August were really bad and that things have stabilized a bit and are clawing their way back."
China's official manufacturing purchasing managers index ticked up to 49.8 in September from 49.7 in August, according to the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, which issues the data with the National Bureau of Statistics. The September reading beat the median 49.7 forecast from a Wall Street Journal poll of nine economists.
A PMI reading above 50 indicates an expansion in manufacturing activity, while a reading below points to a contraction.
Official subindexes measuring production, new orders, new export orders and consumption improved over their August counterparts, according to the statement.
"Both external and domestic demand remain weak and the manufacturing sector still faces big downward pressure," Zhao Qinghe, an economist with the nation's statistics agency, said in a statement.
A competing private gauge of nationwide manufacturing activity, the Caixin China manufacturing PMI, was down slightly at 47.2 in September compared with 47.3 in August. Economists say the Caixin survey tends to capture more private enterprises while the official measure is weighted more toward large state companies.
Outside manufacturing, the economic picture is somewhat brighter. The official nonmanufacturing PMI, also released on Thursday, remained unchanged at 53.4 in September, while the Caixin services index hit a 14-month low of 50.5 in September, compared with 51.5 in August, although it remained above the 50 break-even level.
Thursday's release of data follows weak results recently for China's industrial production, investment and exports. Chinese stock markets were closed for a holiday Thursday but the Australian dollar strengthened modestly in morning trading after the better-than-expected official Chinese data was released.