What to watch at Chinese data 05:00

China’s 3Q GDP report, seems below 7%.

The world’s second-largest economy probably grew 6.8 percent from a year earlier, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. That would be the slowest quarterly pace since 2009.

A sharper slowdown will further cloud the global economic outlook at a time when China has risen to the top of the worry list for investors, as well as Federal Reserve Chair Yellen and other top monetary officials worldwide.

To meet the International Monetary Fund’s data reporting standards, China has tweaked how it reports gross domestic product. The National Bureau of Statistics will release output for each quarter. The new figure makes it easier to calculate the change in output in the last quarter from a year earlier, as the aggregate ones usually smoothed out volatility. This may signal a sharper third-quarter slowdown than the stable headline growth reading.

In a separate announcement posted to the statistics bureau website on Tuesday, officials will release a breakout of output by industry. Services accounted for 49.5 percent of China’s GDP in the first half, the NBS reported in July. That’s important because the sector has been outperforming manufacturing, helping growth.

That picture may not be as rosy in the third quarter, as an equity boom which fueled brokerages and banks earlier has busted. The bull market added 0.5 percentage point to growth in the first half, and its contribution to the third quarter GDP will perhaps be substantially smaller.

Electricity output may no longer be as key as it was, but it remains an important industrial indicator, and readings have remained lackluster.