Probably the most important piece of data at the moment for China is social finance, which is a measure of broader lending activity beyond banks. While this is still growing very strongly, at least it looks like the rates of growth are coming down from the explosive growth seen at the start of the year.
The massive growth in lending is the central problem for the government at the moment. While inflation and growth are on the low side, they won't want to be providing further fuel to financial problems at a time when it appears they have lost some control over the flow of credit.
Real activity remains a mixed bag. Industrial production continues to grow at a slower rate of a little over 9%YoY. Power generation suggests things are weaker, slipping back to 4.1%YoY in May. This is hugely problematic for coal given hydro generation appears to be growing at 20%+.
Property activity has cooled a little in May, with the YoY data slower for both homes under construction and sales, although these data are pretty volatile. Ideally policymakers don't want so much strength concentrated in this sector, especially in regards to housing price strength, but better construction is welcome to absorb high levels of steel stocks.
Inflation remains weak, growing at just over 2%. If anything this is too low, although given labour markets still appear tight, it is probably not such a big problem at this stage.
Finally, auto sales growth moderated to a touch under 10%YoY in May, although this isn't particularly weak in context of the very strong growth seen in the first four months. The weakness was concentrated in passenger vehicle sales, which in the year to date are up ~15%.
Commercial vehicles, on the other hand, remained pretty solid in May in what is a big turn around from the last few years. While this is only a smaller part of the auto market, it is perhaps a sign of business confidence and access to working capital, which has been choked for sometime.
