Profits for Chinese factories fell for the sixth straight month in March, although the rate of decline slowed somewhat from the sharp drop reported at the end of 2014.
Industrial profits fell 0.4 per cent year-on-year in March, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. In decline since last October, they had fallen 4.2 per cent in February and as much as 8 per cent year-on-year in December.
The dip was hardly a surprise given that China's economy expanded at its slowest pace in six years in the first quarter, with gross domestic product growing 7 per cent in the first three months of 2015 compared with the same period a year earlier. China's economy grew 7.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2014.