China’s manufacturing sector continued to dwell in the doldrums in October, with sentiment among factory operators remaining in negative territory for the sixth month in a row. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI), released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday, stood at 49.3 in October, down from 49.8 in September and below the expectation in a Bloomberg survey of analysts for an unchanged reading. The October figure was the lowest since hitting 49.0 in February 2016. The official PMI is a gauge of sentiment among larger and state-owned factory operators, with 50 being the line between ... (full story)