<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">China's manufacturing activity shrank in May for the second successive month, official figures showed Wednesday, the latest sign that the country's economic recovery is losing steam.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The official manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) -- a key measure of factory output -- fell to 48.8 this month, below the 50-point mark that separates expansion and contraction, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The figure followed an unexpected fall to 49.2 in April, which reversed three consecutive months of growth. It was lower than the median estimate of 49.5 in a Bloomberg survey of economists.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The drop "indicates the economic recovery faces challenges", said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">They include a cooling property market and a burgeoning second wave of Covid-19 that has weakened domestic demand, Zhang said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But there is "no sign of imminent policy response", he said, adding the government "may continue to take a 'wait-and-see' stance for now".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">China's economy expanded 4.5 percent in the first quarter of the year as the country rapidly reopened after ditching years of strict health controls that hammered businesses and international supply chains.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But a host of other headaches are bedevilling the world's second-largest economy, including its debt-laden property sector, limp consumer confidence and the risk of recession elsewhere.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The country is also grappling with a new Covid-19 outbreak, but official data on the scale of it is scarce and there is little sign that containment policies will be reimposed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Senior health adviser Zhong Nanshan said the current wave may peak at around 65 million infections per week by the end of June, state-backed Shanghai media outlet The Paper reported last week. AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">bnbd24/kh</div>