Voice of America (VOA) Chinese edition recently published an article stating that, according to a report that a large Chinese investment bank CICC (China International Capital Corporation) just released, China’s manufacturing industry has lost around five million jobs. Among the jobs lost thus far, the trade war was responsible for the loss of about 1.8 million to 1.9 million of them. The CICC economists pointed out that the five million positions reflect roughly 3.4 percent of the total number of manufacturing jobs. The report also indicated that, in addition to the trade war, the domestic economic structural adjustments as well as seasonal factors have also heavily impacted the manufacturing job market. However, the data used for the CICC report were collected before May. It therefore did not reflect the effect of the 10 percent to 25 percent U.S. tariff increase on the US$200 billion Chinese exports to the U.S. All experts expected a much larger scale for job loss once the tariff increase was factored in. In the meantime, China’s second quarter GDP increase slowed down to 6.2 percent, which was the slowest pace of growth since 1992.
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