I’ll have more to come on this separately, details etc.
Earlier:
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The RatingDog Manufacturing PMI is the private-sector survey that used to be branded the Caixin China Manufacturing PMI. Caixin ended its sponsorship of the survey in July 2025, and Shenzhen-based fintech firm RatingDog took over as sponsor from August 2025 onward. The underlying survey, compiled from questionnaires sent to purchasing executives at over 500 manufacturing companies, remains methodologically consistent, and S&P Global continues to compile the data, so the name change doesn’t affect comparability with the historical Caixin series.
The key distinction from the official figures is who’s being surveyed. China publishes two main PMI surveys capturing different parts of the industrial landscape: the official PMI, compiled by the National Bureau of Statistics, focuses primarily on large, state-owned and government-linked enterprises, while the RatingDog/private-sector survey places greater emphasis on small and medium-sized enterprises. That distinction matters for how each is read: the official PMI tends to reflect conditions among larger firms with better access to credit and policy support, while the private-sector survey is often seen as more sensitive to shifts in domestic demand, pricing power and employment conditions, with a sample skewed toward smaller, more export-oriented firms. The RatingDog PMI is drawn from a monthly survey of around 430 purchasing managers, rating business conditions across employment, production, new orders, prices, supplier deliveries and inventories, broadly mirroring the five-component weighting the official NBS survey uses (new orders, output, employment, delivery times, purchase stocks). As with any PMI, a reading above 50 signals expansion and below 50 signals contraction. Because the two surveys sample different segments of the economy, they can diverge, sometimes sharply, particularly when large state firms and smaller private exporters are facing different conditions. Analysts have noted private surveys often provide an earlier signal of stress than the official data, which is part of why traders watch RatingDog closely as a cross-check on the state-compiled figures, especially during periods like now where trade disruption and war-related cost pressures are hitting firms unevenly by size and sector.
This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.